Embracing Complexity

Undepressed

2011-11-18T10:52:00.001-05:00

A couple of weeks ago, I suddenly realized that I am not depressed anymore.

It was an amazing realization. I had been living with a chronic moderate-to-low level of depression for so long that, within it, I had lost a sense of what an undepressed life feels like.

But on this particular day, I was walking home after a busy day at work that ended with a long and intense meeting. I was tired, in that way that people are tired after a long and intense day, but happy.

"Wait, happy?!" I asked myself. "How can it be that I am happy?"

Then I noticed that there had been this sense of happiness at the background of my life that had been gradually increasing in strength over the past weeks or months. And I remembered that this is how my life used to be. There was a time in my life when my friends called me "Mellow Happiness." With a jolt of surprise, I realized that this meant that I was no longer depressed!

Another way of describing the difference: I no longer felt the sense that I was constantly swimming through mud. Ordinary things were no longer extraordinarily difficult. And a lot of things were actually becoming fun again. My sense of enjoyment was coming alive again.

I am not sure exactly how this has happened. I was in counseling with an excellent therapist for a time, and that certainly was helpful. When he retired last spring, I did not feel ready for the loss of that support. Even though I had been making great progress and was feeling a gradual sense of dealing better with my life, once he retired I felt I relapsed a bit for a time, but at least that relapse was understandable. I was in mourning. But I was also committed to proving how helpful he had been by taking to heart all I had learned and seeing if I could fly solo now.

As I started the academic year, I adopted two mantras. One was "unfailing love." The other was "solid gold." Both indicated that I was resolved to live up to a way of being in the world where, in all my relationships with everyone, I would be noble and gracious, respectful and caring, no matter how I felt about how others treated me. I knew the year was going to bring situations in which I would be taking bold but controversial stands, and I knew from past experience that this kind of leadership leaves you often feeling exposed and alone. You may sense that there are those who support you, but what is most visible is the push-back. You have to stand strong, and I was committed to maintaining the highest standards of respect towards those who disagreed with me or opposed me.

That day that I left the meeting happy was a day when I felt a strong sense that my efforts really were making a difference: small but real. We need to matter in each other's lives. And maintaining respect in the face of difference and even opposition is a particularly strong version of "mattering." If that struggle is held with integrity, something new can be born that is even better than what either party individually wanted. It is a creative opportunity.

And we humans love connecting and creating. These are two of the most fulfilling experiences of our lives. In depression, you feel profoundly disconnected and discouraged, and too much discouragement dries up creativity. Looking for connection, and finding ways to nurture creativity, can be helpful in coming back out of depression. I know that this is easy to say but hard to do. "This I know experimentally." But what else is there to do but try? For a long time you may not see/feel the results (which can be discouraging, and therefore which can reinforce the depression), but in my case, with patience and persistence, this really did eventually help.

So, anyone reading this who may still be swimming through the mud that is depression, please don't give up. When the mud thins, the swimming eases, and the light starts to shine through, then you will find yourself "remembering" how beautiful life really is. Until then, ride every inkling of joy that manages to burst through. These are your lifelines. These are what show you the way out of the mud and into the light of the fulfilling life you truly deserve.

Perfect Ministry

2011-07-11T11:33:00.000-04:00

Yesterday in Meeting for Worship, someone spoke and gave perfect ministry.

He spoke of his own journey with spoken ministry. He said that he finds himself speaking a lot in Meeting when he worships with inmates at a nearby prison. He feels that they find some spoken ministry helpful. Usually in life, he said, he finds he wants to stay in the background, trusting others to step forward into more visible roles. But this experience in the prison ministry, of feeling responsible for ministering to others, has brought out something in his soul -- he speaks out more in life in general, and in our Meeting, and he has been writing and having his writings published. "I know that preparing heart and mind does not mean that we should specifically plan to speak in Meeting, or plan not to speak. But we can get into habits of silence in Meeting," he said, in conclusion, grateful that he had pushed himself out of his own comfort zone and has come into a new way of experiencing Meeting, and ministry, and life.

This message really spoke to my condition.

I felt called out and criticized myself, but felt joyful about that rather than ashamed. I thought, "that message was for me, and he is right -- I have stepped back in life, I have fallen silent, and this silence has now turned into a bad habit. I need to push myself, even at risk of potentially getting it wrong sometimes. I have ideas, but my not acting on them is not virtuous humility -- it is a habit of fear."

What amazed me was how joyful and released I felt.

Often, criticism makes me feel bad. I can get beyond feeling bad and still perceive the value of justly-earned criticism. But I paused to reflect on why I didn't at all feel bad this time. In part, it was the gentle, humble spirit of this Friend's ministry. He spoke out of his own personal experience, from such authenticity that it presented a message of value to all of us. He never once suggested that he was criticizing any of us. In fact, I am sure he was not. He was simply sharing a realization so powerful and liberating for himself that he he felt moved to share it. He was not at all presuming to know what God wanted from any of us. I think he genuinely likes all of us and appreciates exactly what we each give, never asking for anything other than what we already offer, but always accepting what we offer as gift.

So, his own humility kept the message pure and clear and easier to accept than if it had been laced with specific criticism toward any of us. But the other part of why I received it so well was because it did speak a positive truth, not a negative one. The way I heard it was not about how I had failed, but what I have yet to do. It was a gentle invitation to step more fully into saying "yes" to life, to engaging life more directly, more "experimentally."

I call this Friend's ministry perfect because I think it genuinely reflected something important about God's love. When God pushes us, it is never that God wants us to feel bad for the ways we fall short. God wants us to live freely and creatively. God's deepest hope for us is that we willingly respond to God's call, accepting the unutterable joy that this brings.

Updates

2011-07-10T12:24:00.000-04:00

Sorry that it has been a while since I've posted. Since it has been a while, I thought I would share a few updates.

Work

The past academic year went pretty well. I did manage to keep the research momentum going quite well in the spring, and feel glad about that. I then presented on my current paper in a conference in June, and am trying to finish writing the paper this summer.

Not being chair of my department has made a huge difference in my work life. I still feel my administrative duties are a bit too heavy (coordinating our Peace Studies program), but way has not opened for me to let this go. I am still discerning what exactly my role should be.

Music

My musical life has really picked up. I did a lot of performing during the academic year, and now this summer too. This summer I am part of a recorder group, a concert band, and an orchestra, with performances scheduled for all three groups. After the recorder concert and the band concert, things will lighten up. I had committed to those before the orchestra opportunity appeared. But now that I am in this orchestra, I think I might drop my participation in the concert band.

Being relatively inexperienced in orchestral matters, I handed over first flute part to the other flute player (who used to play regularly in another local orchestra). The second flute part was nice, and relatively easy, giving me a chance to work further on performance nerves.

Just when I was congratulating myself for not letting pride overcome common sense, making my life more stressful than it needs to be (I am at last learning!), I found out that the first flute player cannot make one of our concerts, and the conductor wants me to play first flute for that one.

Then I realized that this meant that (a) I have to learn both parts, and (b) I have to perform first flute in a concert without any opportunity for rehearsal on this part first!

So, instead of taking the "easy" way out, it turns out that my choice led me into a much more challenging and stressful situation than if I had just accepted first flute to begin with! If I had, I would only have had to learn one part, and would have had ample rehearsal time before performing.

This is what my life is like. Even when I try to be good and actually make things easier for myself, this sort of thing happens!

It may sound like I am complaining, and maybe I am, a little, but I am also laughing (ruefully, though). Although I was initially stressed about this, I have come to accept the challenge and will make the best of it.

It helps that I've been reading the book, Talent is Overrated by Geoff Colvin, and one of the points he makes is that those who are regarded as "talented" are those who continually challenge themselves beyond their comfort zones.

I have been thinking a lot about this in my own life. People have told me that I need to be easier on myself, and I know they are partially right. But I have also suspected that there is something important to the ways I challenge myself. I didn't want to let go of this completely. So what I have been trying to do is find the right balance: enough challenge to keep me learning and striving and seeking, but without overwhelming myself.

Gardening

I heard something on the radio about the dangers of giant hogweed, and saw something similar in my own garden -- a huge weed I had let go because it was kind of interesting and very scary. Closer inspection revealed that it was cow parsnip (a relative of giant hogweed). Both can cause burns upon contact, though those caused by giant hogweed are much worse. I carefully covered myself up, and removed the cow parsnip, and succeeded in not contacting the plant in the process.

Meanwhile, neighbors have been impressed that I still mow my grass with a non-gasoline-powered push mower, and one even wanted to try it. She said she would get one when her current mower dies. I feel like in my own small humble way, I have fulfilled George Fox's advice to: "Be patterns, be examples . . . wherever you come; that your carriage and life may preach among all sorts of people, and to them; then you will come to walk cheerfully over the world, answering that of God in everyone." If my "mowing cheerfully over my lawn" inspires others to make more sustainable choices themselves, then this is a good way of being a "pattern and example," I should think!

Quakerism

I am feeling concerned about the state of Quakerism today, and am feeling stirrings to do something about it. But I'm not sure what...

State of the World

I am also feeling concerned about the state of the world, in many respects, and am feeling stirrings to do something about it. But I'm not sure what...

Memorial Day 2011

2011-05-30T08:00:00.003-04:00

In 2006, 2007, and 2008, I posted some numbers for Memorial Day, and wish today to continue in that tradition.

Number killed on 9/11: 2996. Wikipedia breaks this number down as follows:
"There were 2,996 fatalities, excluding the 19 hijackers and 2,977 victims. The victims were distributed as follows: 246 on the four planes (from which there were no survivors), 2,606 in New York City in the towers and on the ground, and 125 at the Pentagon. All the deaths in the attacks were civilians except for 55 military personnel killed in the attack on the Pentagon. More than 90 countries lost citizens in the attacks on the World Trade Center." (Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9/11)

Number of U.S. military killed as a result of U.S. military activities since 9/11: 6049

1595 U.S. military killed in Afghanistan
4454 U.S. military killed in War on Iraq

Source:http://www.antiwar.com/casualties/

Iraqi Deaths

The previous source estimates 1,455,590 Iraqi deaths due to the U.S. War on Iraq.

A different source counts 101,081-110,405 Iraqi civilian deaths since the U.S. War on Iraq began.
(These figures are critiqued by many as being low estimates. See the Iraqi body count webpage, linked below.)

Source:
http://www.iraqbodycount.net/

If you find figures that you believe are more accurate than the ones here, please let me know in "comments," and please cite your sources.

Some additional context:

Wars apparently are becoming more and more deadly for civilians. Of the deaths caused by each of the following wars, here are the percentages of those deaths being civilian deaths:

World War I: 14%
World War II: 67%
Wars of the 1980's: 75%
Wars of the 1990's: 90%

http://webarchive.afsc.org/youthmil/html/news/feb99/askus0299.htm

(The book those statistics are from is: WAR AND PUBLIC HEALTH, edited by Barry S. Levy and Victor Sidel, New York: Oxford University Press, 1997.)

War on Iraq (based on above numbers using the lower Iraqi Body Count numbers): 96% are civilian deaths. (Using the higher estimate, it is over 99%)

A New Movement I Would Like to See

2011-03-05T17:15:00.001-05:00

I find it hard to listen to the news these days, because I get so upset at so much that seems to be unraveling. I cannot believe some of the things that some of our political leaders are trying to do these days.

But I realize that the context is that people are getting desperate as governmental budget crises loom, at both the national level and for many of the states. When there is a budget crisis, there are two possible responses: cut expenses, or raise revenues. Doing both would have a bigger effect than doing just one. But for some reason, most politicians seem dead set against raising revenues, because that means raising taxes.

All of this happens at a time when the gap between the rich and the poor has been growing. A blogger I follow has posted about this on his blog, and he included a graph that visually shows the growing gap.

This got me to thinking: it may not really be that there's less money, as such. It's just that over time it has become distributed in a way that fewer people have it. And those few have a lot.

Wouldn't it be great if the super-rich started a movement advocating higher taxes for themselves? If they started saying that, by virtue of controlling so much money, they have a greater responsibility to attend to the public good?

And, in truth, I wouldn't mind paying higher taxes, myself. But my own income is such that that would not have a very big impact.

Here are some more illuminating graphs: this graph shows federal tax rates historically. And this one too is remarkable: tax revenues recently have been declining!

And finally, what are our major expenses at the federal level? Wars.

Focus

2011-02-20T09:45:00.001-05:00

I came across the book Focus by Leo Babauta, and decided to assign it to all of my students this semester (as supplementary reading) to help them think through their relationship to technology, and also their approach to their own lives and work. Every now and then I open up some time for us to talk about this. My students' reactions (not surprisingly) are mixed. For some, these ideas are a welcome revelation. Others resist tremendously.

Babauta discusses how our technological connectedness can be addictive. He also points out how the addictive effects can distract us from focusing our energies well on the projects that may be the most meaningful to us. Creative work requires times of solitude and sustained deep attention. He is not against technology. He is just aware of how technology can take over our lives and start to control us, and his book is largely about how we can regain control of our technology.

A lot of what he discusses about how to simplify and focus are principles I have been discovering and implementing in my own life, and so I appreciate the book for the support it offers as well as the new ideas I have been trying. He advocates single-tasking instead of multi-tasking, and enjoying each moment. "Practice stillness, and the stillness becomes a canvas upon which you can paint the masterpiece of your life."

More on Burnout

2011-01-22T10:06:00.004-05:00

As I prepare for the start of a new semester, I have mixed feelings. I do love teaching and have some new ideas that I am excited about. But I also feel a sense of trepidation, in large part because I feel increasingly intolerant of being too busy.

Last semester, as I felt myself starting to worry about burnout again, I had a new insight about burnout.

I think that one of the causes of burnout is when we put extraordinary effort into achieving what is merely ordinary.

Now, the merely ordinary is a fine accomplishment--I’m not denying that. If our lives are spent achieving the ordinary things that contribute meaningfully to the functioning of the world, that is a life well-lived. We can derive a great sense of satisfaction from such work.

But when we continually push ourselves beyond the limits of personal health and well-being to do so (which we are doing when we are chronically “too busy”), our lives are out of balance. We suffer; those around us suffer--the cost exceeds the benefit.

There are times when it is noble and heroic to put forth great effort. Those times are times of crisis, and responding to crises is extraordinary. Those times, then, are times of putting forth extraordinary effort to accomplish something extraordinary. The cost is proportional to the benefit, and so, while tired and depleted after it is all over, we still are likely to feel a sense of satisfaction and accomplishment that aids in our healing and recovery.

But those times are rare, intense, and relatively brief.

When extraordinary effort becomes a way of life, the norm instead of the exception, that’s a problem. It is not really a sustainable way of life. You work too hard without time for recovery and renewal. And while you are accomplishing something, your accomplishments are not extraordinary enough to result in either social appreciation or a sense of satisfaction proportional to your effort.

If you are a humble and modest type of person, you may say, "I don't work hard in order to gain appreciation from others, anyway," and that's commendable, but this is not a question of the purity of your motivations, but rather almost a physics question related to the law of conservation of energy. We cannot keep putting out energy without renewing our energy as well. And so if our efforts are extraordinary, our ordinary methods of taking care of ourselves will no longer be enough to keep us going. Net result: burnout.

MLK Day

2011-01-17T10:37:00.005-05:00

I was recently in a conversation with someone about the problems of the world. Even though we both care very much about the problems of the world, and were looking for real solutions, the conversation did not connect. I tried to stay focused on the problems themselves, but the person I was talking with kept attacking me. I kept trying to find common ground, but the person I was talking with kept trying to exaggerate every difference into good vs. evil, with my position being characterized as representing the "evil" side. It was only later, when I had a chance to reflect on the conversation, that I fully grasped that this was the dynamic that made the conversation so frustrating.

Once I realized this, I was genuinely puzzled. First of all, why blame me for all the problems of the world? I am nobody. I have no real power. Secondly, I care about solving problems. I devote my life to teaching and writing about philosophy and peace, and, on the side, I try to create beautiful music to uplift people's souls. Why blame someone who is trying to live in a good way? Even if I am not very successful at addressing problems or even uplifting people's spirits, the worst that one can say about me is that I try in a pathetic sort of way and fall well short of my idealistic vision. But I don't do any damage. Rather than being a grave source of danger in the world, in truth I'm pretty harmless.

So, why was this person attacking me?

I realized that this person was highly influenced by much of today's media, especially certain well-known talk-show personalities. Their style is exactly this: to draw sharp enemy lines and attack. Fellow Americans who disagree with them are characterized as dangerous, even evil. I have trouble grasping what they think is gained by such an approach.

When the shootings of January 8 transpired, I, like the rest of the country, was horrified. But in the days that followed, I was glad to see that part of the response was to question the tone of political discourse in our country today. I welcomed the calls to civility, even though I knew it was unrealistic to think that things would change that easily.

What I would like to do to honor Martin Luther King, Jr. Day is reflect on some of what I have heard in the ensuing discussions of civility and violence.

In particular, there are two strange objections to the call to civility that I have heard a lot that I wish to respond to. A third point I wish to respond to has to do with gun laws. While this third point seems to shift from questions concerning verbal violence to questions related to physical violence, it is still a point about communication, and represents a strategy that stifles conversation instead of facilitating it.

Three Strange Objections to the Call to Engage More Productively in Debates

Objection 1. Criticizing language use is a threat to the right of free speech.

My response: No, criticizing uncivil language is to question why people wish to use the right to free speech in this way. It is to ask: what is the aim of hateful speech, and does it accomplish that aim?

If the aim is cathartic venting, then maybe it accomplishes this aim, but probably only temporarily.

Isn't the deeper aim some kind of real improvement? Isn't it that we want to solve real problems in the world? If so, then it is highly questionable that hateful language ever actually accomplishes improvement. Instead, it draws and reinforces enemy lines, which tends to exacerbate (rather than resolve) conflict.

Martin Luther King, Jr. has said, "Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that," and also: "Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into a friend."

Objection 2: Those who blame those who use hateful language are just as hateful.

My response: There is an important distinction to be made between language that attacks the being of a person or a group (either by wishing them dead or eliminated, or by casting them as irredeemably evil), and language that criticizes specific actions as being either morally wrong, or pragmatically not likely to achieve their intended effects.

The latter: the questioning or criticizing of actions, constitutes the critical inquiry that is crucially important to a well-functioning society, and is why we value the right to free speech.

It is only the former -- attacks on people or groups of people -- that can be called "hateful." I doubt that it ever accomplishes anything good.

Objection 3. Because people are mourning, this is not the appropriate time to discuss gun laws.

My response: That's like saying when someone dies from cancer, "because people are mourning, this is not the appropriate time to talk about the urgency of finding a cure for cancer."

But if not now, when? Some mythical time in the future when everything is going swimmingly well? Some unbelievable time in the future when people lovingly treasure their guns for their aesthetic beauty and for the fun of shooting at tin cans, and no one ever shoots other people with them (even accidentally), and no one is still alive who has ever suffered the effects of gun violence? Then finally it is appropriate for people to "objectively" decide whether it is appropriate for ordinary people to have their own assault weapons? And until then -- during this time when people do in fact kill other people with guns -- it is "inappropriate" to bring up the question, and the default should be to just let people have their guns? Why? Do we really think that gun owners' fears and insecurities (and gun manufacturers' desire to make money selling guns) are more important that gun victims' desire for safety?

Related: I am increasingly amazed at the mythology of guns. While the reality of the situation of January 8 was that (a) the gunman failed to kill his main target (even after succeeding in shooting her through the head), and (b) the gunman was taken down by unarmed civilians, we still hear people surmising that the whole incident could somehow have been prevented if only more ordinary people happened to have assault weapons handy!

I think it is highly unrealistic to assume that there was time for a person to identify what was going on, pull out a gun, and manage to kill just the person responsible (without accidentally hitting innocent bystanders) before the first gunman had managed to kill all six of his victims. I've seen estimates that it probably only took 6-10 seconds for him to shoot that first round. But, even if a second gun-wielder managed to shoot only the first, now imagine how this looks to everyone else: there are two gunmen shooting. In the chaos and confusion of the moment, is it realistic to assume that people can tell who is the "good" gunman and who is the "bad" gunman? Now imagine even more people with guns, all increasingly confused! I cannot believe that a situation of several gun-wielders shooting at each other in a panicking crowd would have been "safer" and would have resulted in fewer deaths!

But my main point here is that incidents like this should inform our discussions of gun laws. We need to consider the actual data of how guns are used. We need to take into account the fact that the United States has one of the highest rates of per capita gun murders in the world. This is relevant information that should inform our discussions. The claim that it is "inappropriate" to talk about this now is a rhetorical strategy intended to stop conversation at a time when gun-rights proponents are (rightly) worried that this latest incident raises important questions about the wisdom of our current laws.

Lessons for MLK Day

Martin Luther King, Jr., had a vision of not only racial equality and justice, but a wider vision too of economic justice and of people respecting each other across all lines of difference. He had a methodology of bringing this vision to reality by engaging the power of love -- a power superior to hatred and violence. He could see that hatred only creates enemy lines, which foster resentment and inspire violence. He could see that violence creates more problems than it ever solves. If we are serious about addressing problems and creating a better world, we cannot indulge in the temporary catharsis of hatred and violence while hiding in the illusion of safety created by walls and guns. That does not really solve the problems. It does not really keep us safe.

To solve problems, we must do the hard work of building bridges, crossing those bridges, and genuinely meeting those who are different from us. To solve problems, we must engage in the intellectually and emotionally demanding work of trying to understand issues and situations from multiple points of view. To solve problems, we must be willing to admit we might be wrong. But we also must be willing to stand up for what we believe is right. We must be willing to admit that others may be right. But we also must have the courage to respectfully call others out when we feel they are wrong.

Above all, we must listen, in an unending search for common ground, using that as the foundation from which to build new solutions -- new and better ways to live together and work together. Above all, we must look for the best in each other, and try to draw that out, and give it strength, for that is the material out of which we build a truly just world.

Happy MLK Day, everyone!

On Workaholism

2011-01-16T09:02:00.000-05:00

I came across some articles on workaholism, and read them, in part because I am sometimes accused of being a workaholic. I am not sure that I am a workaholic, though. I think that there is a difference between a positive way of having a strong relationship with one's work, and a negative way of having a strong relationship with one's work. The articles I have read seem to support such a distinction, to some extent, and yet still lean heavily on the side of being suspicious of those who work long hours.

If I am honest with myself, I must confess that my own relationship to my work is mixed. On the positive side, I like my work and am devoted to fulfilling its ideals. I try to do a good job, not for problematic reasons (wanting praise, esteem, power, or money), but because I care about the actual effects on other people: I want people to learn, and through their learning, become happier and better people in the world.

On the negative side, I realize that I do have pathological tendencies that I must constantly be on guard against, especially a tendency to feel I have to prove my worthiness as a human being by doing good work. That's there, but while I do have to struggle against it, it's not the sole motivation for work. I also have to make a living, but that is not my sole reason for doing this work, either. Related, I have deep-rooted fears of letting people down. So my work can get a bit fear-driven if I am not careful to watch this as well.

But, I try hard to keep the good reasons in focus, and front and center in my daily consciousness.

I tend to regard workaholism as a compulsion-driven addiction. If I were primarily driven by esteem or financial considerations, or fear, I would confess to being a workaholic.

But because I do have positive reasons for devoting myself to my work, and try to prevent the more problematic reasons from controlling me, am I right to conclude that I am not really a workaholic?

How do you define the term?

Happy New Year!

2011-01-14T11:53:00.003-05:00

A somewhat belated Happy New Year to all of my readers! (At least it is still January!)

My last posting was about my research plan to write at least 200 words a day. Unfortunately, I was not able to keep that up through the fall, not so much because I was too busy, but because I floundered a bit in finding a good schedule of times each day to work on my writing. Then my schedule sort of settled, but time for writing remained unresolved. Can I learn from that experience and do better this coming semester? We shall see!

Three additional factors inhibited my efforts last semester: (1) I had more students than usual (larger classes); (2) I had someone working on a translation project for me, and so every time I did have time for research, I found myself proofreading versions of the translation, and (3) my music schedule unexpectedly became very busy.

What makes me more optimistic about the spring is that: (1) I'll have smaller classes again.

And (2): the good news about the translation project is that it's pretty much finished now, and so I've been working this January break on following up on the research I intended to do with this document now translated. I'm hoping that the enthusiasm and momentum I have generated will carry me through to a productive writing schedule through the upcoming spring semester.

Regarding (3), I do have performances again in the spring, but I think not as many. I really love music and am glad that I have had so many opportunities to perform again. Just when I was starting to worry that maybe it is taking too much time, I came across this interesting article noting that a large percentage of "geniuses" have serious artistic hobbies.

What is encouraging about that article is its suggestion that having a serious hobby can be good for your main work, because making connections across different areas of interest enhances creativity. I already realized that having two main strong interests makes me happy and makes my life feel better balanced. But the thought that the two strong interests might be mutually benefiting each other removes all lingering traces of guilt about how much time I do put in to my music.

Yet, if I face the full complexity of my life honestly, is it really just two main interests? That is, is it:

My intellectual work
My music

Or, is it:

Philosophy
Peace Studies
Music

Or:

Writing
Teaching
Administration
Music

Or even:

Writing philosophy
Teaching philosophy
Writing peace studies
Teaching peace studies
Administration of peace studies program
Music

The last one expresses best why I sometimes feel overwhelmed by the complexity of my life.

Right now, in January, my life feels ideal, because it is simplified to:

Writing (philosophy)
Music

This, for me, is the perfect life.

What is your perfect life?

200 Words A Day

2010-08-29T14:45:00.002-04:00

A new academic year is starting, and so I've been going through the hair-raising transition between my summer schedule and my academic year schedule.

My summer schedule is calm and contemplative. Every week-day I go to my library carrel and work on my writing. I take a break for lunch. I check up on things in my office if I'm feeling brave. I return to my carrel in the afternoon. After dinner, I practice music, and then take it easy until bedtime. Sometimes I gather with friends over lunch or dinner. Every now and then I take a day off to have a music day with my musician friends -- the neighbors say they have appreciated our free "concerts"! It's a nice schedule -- productive and soothing and soul-restoring.

Notice that I wrote that paragraph in the present-tense. Apparently I still don't want to accept that in fact this has all changed this past week!

My academic year schedule looks very different. I rise early to fit a run in before the busyness begins. I try to squeeze in a short time in my carrel to continue work on my research and writing. Then I go to my office to prepare for class. Then I teach my class(es) -- one or two each day, squeezing in a quick lunch when I can. Then I have office hours. If students don't show up, I catch up on e-mail, administrative work, and/or grading. Most late-afternoons I have meetings. After dinner I practice music, and then spend a couple of hours reading for class, or grading. "Where's the free time?" you may be wondering. There isn't any during the week. I am lucky to get a full night's sleep. I can get away with taking a little free time on the weekends. But the weekends are also time to catch up on household chores. And, once the semester gets rolling, entire weekends can be taken up by grading. (Grading philosophy papers is very time-consuming.)

To try to stave off despair in this onslaught of intense busyness, I've tried a couple of strategies: (1) set up a good schedule and trust it to help me accomplish all that I find meaningful; (2) live in the present and remember that I actually like most of what I do!; and, new this semester: (3) adopt a new plan for my research time.

This new plan is called "200 Words A Day." I was inspired by this article from the Chronicle of Higher Education (apologies if you cannot access it -- I have an online subscription and am not sure if the articles are available to everyone. I hope at least this one is!).

Since you can spend all of your research and writing time tinkering (especially if your time is very limited) -- reading, note-taking, editing previously written text -- it can be hard to sustain forward momentum on actually writing. So, my new rule is to start each writing and research session by writing 200 new words of text towards an actual article or book project each day. Then I can spend the remainder of my time tinkering to my heart's content. 200 words is not a lot. But the daily discipline of it adds up over time. And it is giving me a satisfying sense of continued progress even amidst all of the busyness.

It is a clear goal, and it is manageable. It usually doesn't take very long. So far, I always easily go over the limit. It gives me the chance to get on paper ideas that have long been churning around in my mind but that I've delayed actually writing until I read that one more article first! If reading said article causes me to modify the text later, that's fine (I can deal with that during my more open, tinkering time). But I need to be doing a better job of writing text, and this approach creates regular space for doing so.

Lately (especially as I saw the end of summer approach), I have been getting overwhelmed with the complexity of my research and the many tasks I have to do, so that when I face a small chunk of time to work on it, I can get paralyzed trying to choose what is most important to do: read this, or that? Look up this, or that? Write for this paper, or that one? Respond to this person who has checked in with me about something related to my research, or that person?

So, this new approach is a breakthrough for me. As I face my small window of research opportunity each day (sometimes as small as one hour), I know exactly how to start! 200 words of text! But which project? On weekdays, it is my article; on weekends, it is a book project. So even that question is answered! Then I look at my outline, or at what I wrote the day before, and just write what I'm most interested in at that moment!

From there, I can spend the whole remainder of the time writing, or after I hit 200 words (or finish my thought), then I can shift to the other research-related tasks that need attention.

For this reason alone, I approach the new academic year with some optimism!

Actually, all of my classes do look good this semester. The students do start off the year with wonderful enthusiasm! It is great to see! And students have been clamoring to get into my classes -- this happened last semester too. It's nice to see how interested they are in philosophy and peace studies!

Happy new year to all of my academic-schedule friends!

Depression or Faith Crisis?

2010-07-04T11:00:00.001-04:00

I found an excellent book on depression. It is Jon Allen's Coping with Depression: From Catch-22 to Hope. I mentioned it last year because I found this online summary of major themes from the book. But I recently bought the book and am finding it really helpful.

My own depression is complex. It has not been incapacitating, but it has slowed me down. I gradually started losing sight of my life goals -- those goals that give life a sense of meaning and purpose -- and became more focused on just getting through the day-to-day. My life goals have not been completely stalled, because the day-to-day is largely structured in ways that help me make progress towards these goals, but I've lost a kind of sustaining joy: the joy of knowing why the day-to-day matters.

I am making slow but real progress in recovering. My buying a house last year, my active musical involvement, and my picking up running again, are very good signs. Slight hints of occasional joy or interest have become real glimpses and then even actual moods that last longer and longer.

So, lately, now that I've had the time and energy to reflect more fully and productively on all of this, guided by excellent counseling and the above-mentioned book, I've been thinking about the meaning of life again.

And I have been taking an interest again in spiritual dimensions of psychological issues.

I finally have to confess to myself that I've been in a serious faith crisis. This surprises me, because I am a person of very strong faith. And, indeed, the nature of this faith crisis is a bit unusual. It has nothing at all to do with questioning whether there is a God. On the contrary, I have been sure that God has been right here with me through everything, at my side at every moment. I have even had an ongoing appreciation of God's presence, sure that it is God's presence that has been sustaining me as I go through the motions. When good things happen, I remember to thank God. In my classes when questions of religion come up, I fiercely defend the validity of considering a spiritual dimension to reality and don't let my students dismiss this perspective without insisting that they define their terms carefully and construct actual arguments. "I know how secular academia has become, but does that make it true?! I ask you to critically reflect on everything else you take for granted, so you have to critically reflect on this too!"

So, what is my faith crisis then? What is different is that I haven't been talking with God much lately. It used to be that I was aware of God's presence and had a kind of friendly ongoing rapport with God. I would talk to God.

But these recent years have been more like I am aware of God right beside me but I hold a stony silence. I haven't turned to look directly at God myself, or address God in the kind of conversational way I used to.

So I finally thought to ask myself, "Am I angry at God?" To my surprise, I realized I was.

Why? I think there are two reasons, and they are related. In my own struggles, I am upset that we are made so imperfect and vulnerable. I have felt the sense that, unless I get everything lined up exactly right, my life flies out of control. And I can't keep everything lined up exactly right. I keep losing my grip on something or other. So I have felt I try and try but things keep getting worse instead of better because I cannot do it all perfectly.

The second reason I am upset is that I feel that the human relationship with the planet is equally fragile. Unless we live with perfect harmoniousness with the natural world, we are going to destroy the planet, or at least the conditions for human life, taking down lots of other life forms with us along the way!

For a long time, I blamed myself: I'm not perfect enough to handle my own life well; nor have I put my energies effectively enough into work that would help humans in general live in a more balanced relationship to the natural world.

Counseling has helped me realize (a) the hubris behind my self-blame (am I really that powerful?), and (b) how self-destructive and counter-productive such self-blame is.

While I know intellectually that I should let go of blame altogether, I ended up shifting the blame to human nature more generally, and then to God for making humans this way.

"How could you make us so stupid and so powerful at the same time?! What were you thinking?! What a recipe for disaster!"

But now that I've gotten these assumptions out in the open, I can critically reflect on them. After all, something else I have been learning in counseling is that all-or-nothing thinking fuels depression.

Is it really true that I have to be perfect or my whole life spins out of control and falls apart? No. Anyone who objectively looks at my life would call it quite effective and successful, overall.

Is it really true that we humans have to get everything exactly right to avoid destroying the planet? The objective evidence says: the planet is still alive; humans are not extinct; lots of biological life forms are still alive. Of course we don't know what the future holds. But we haven't completely blown it yet, anyway.

Maybe we humans are not entirely stupid, nor as powerful as we often like to think. Maybe neither my life nor the fate of the planet is as fragile as I sometimes think. At any rate, I can look at what is, right now, and see that there are a lot of reasons for hope.

So, once I bring my spiritual crisis to light, and articulate the fear that is behind it, I see how inappropriate it is to blame God for something I don't even know is true! Once I consider the truth of my assumptions, I see how questionable they really are.

The actual evidence says: my life is not bad; the planet is still alive. Yes, it is good to keep striving -- the world may well need our best efforts. And there is certainly great spiritual value in striving to live a balanced life harmonious with others and with the natural world. But getting depressed enough to give up is totally counter-productive. That is not helping anyone, and such misery is not what God wants for me, or anyone else, either.

Feeling the Effects

2010-07-03T10:40:00.004-04:00

A couple of days ago I saw something in the newspaper saying that 6 out of 10 Americans have been adversely affected by the financial crisis (losing jobs, or having reduced salary, hours, or benefits).

My reaction was surprise. The first question that popped into my mind was, "who are the other 4 out of 10?!"

I don't think I know anyone who has not suffered one of the above financial set-backs.

So my question is serious. Who are those other 4 out of 10? Have they just held steady, or have they actually gained, financially? I really would have thought that the percentage of those who directly feel the crisis would be larger.

Alternative Energy

2010-06-26T09:04:00.000-04:00

I heard in the news recently that there was a poll that showed that Americans were very interested in the development of new sources of energy. Americans are worried about too much dependency on oil.

I've been thinking a lot lately about using our own physical energy to do more.

For a big portion of my life, I did not have a car, and so I got myself around primarily by using my own energy -- walking and bicycling. There was a time of my life when I bicycled 10 miles to work and 10 miles back each day. Other times I lived in cities or towns, making bicycling and walking distances easily manageable. The first several times that I traveled around England, it was by bicycle. In those days, my choices were partially motivated by financial considerations, but also by principle. I wanted to demonstrate that it was possible.

During one of these times, when I was living in a city in the U.S., I was walking back home one day carrying a load of supplies I had bought. I was tired and, I'll admit, kind of miserable. But I happened to walk past a gym. Through large windows, I could see dozens of people putting forth frantic effort that was not actually doing any real work in the world. I suddenly stopped and watched for a bit, amazed. I realized that these people had all most likely driven here to do this! Yes, it was admirable that they were trying to stay in shape. But the sight of them with their earphones on, some reading magazines at their exercise machines, each lost in their own world, putting forth all this effort that was not actually powering anything else, struck me as incredibly bizarre. If they walked or bicycled to run their errands, as I was doing, they could integrate their exercise into their everyday lives and not need to take extra time to do it. By powering themselves by their own energy, they would save gas and ease global climate change.

Yet, I knew and still know why people do things this way. Getting in your car is safe and easy. Working out at the gym gives you a sense of motivation and security (because of all the others around) in a safe setting conducive to distractions if you need distractions to take your mind off the effort of exertion.

Integrating exercise into your life by using your own energy to power the running of errands is just not as fun. The weather keeps changing. You see strangers on the streets, not all of whom are friendly all the time. You may have to travel through questionable parts of town. You feel vulnerable when you are not enclosed in a lockable fast-moving metal box. Our towns and cities are not usually built with pedestrians in mind -- sidewalks give out; you have to take the long way around because the short way is reserved for motor vehicles; many crossings are highly dangerous. And carrying heavy bags of stuff on a long walk just isn't fun. Since you have to stay alert, you cannot distract yourself as at the gym, and so you are aware of the dangers and your own effort every step of the way.

Furthermore, it has become socially unacceptable to show up at public places all hot and sweaty. Gyms are the only places where being hot and sweaty in public is acceptable, and yet they have showers, giving the message that you must clean yourself up as quickly as possible after exercising to be presentable again.

Yet, all of this is real. It is good for us to use our bodies for work and to get out into the world and confront all of its uncertainties.

And, our own energy is a very real energy source. I think it is worth thinking about whether there are more ways we can use our own energy in place of fossil fuels. Do our villages, towns, and cities need to be re-designed to make it more possible to run our errands on foot again?

Also, I should clarify that I am not opposed to gyms. I appreciate the way they are constructed to bring people together to support each other, inspire each other, and learn from each other to develop comprehensive fitness. But why can't we hook up the exercise machines in gyms to make use of all of that human power? I had that thought too, on that day when I paused to watch the people in the gym. Not too long ago, I did hear that a college was thinking of doing this as an experiment: having the gym machines generate some of the building's electricity. Why haven't we been doing this all along?

So, one "alternative" energy source we might want to seriously consider is making more use of human energy again.

New Grocery Store

2010-06-25T10:42:00.003-04:00

I'm sure my avid readers have been dying to hear about our new grocery store, especially after my anticipatory dream (see my comment to that post)!

Well, I am happy to report that it is quite nice. Like in my dream, I was happy to see that they still have the little grocery carts (small ones that are two-tiered. I put my re-usable bags on the bottom tier, and pile my groceries in the top. These smaller grocery carts are much easier to maneuver than the full-sized ones). Unlike in my dream, it wasn't hard to find things. The grocery store is arranged like a grocery store, thank goodness!

This new grocery store gives you a credit for bringing your own bags! I had already gotten in the habit of bringing my own re-usable bags, so this was a happy surprise, to find myself rewarded for this! Even more amazing, if you bring three bags but only use two, they still give you the credit for all three! Ok, it's only 3 cents per bag, but, still, it's nice that they are trying to provide an incentive.

The other remarkable thing about our new grocery store is that there is the sound of thunder just before the produce gets misted! I'm not kidding!

They have just about everything that the previous grocery store had, though I'm still trying to train them to supply some of what I buy on a regular basis. They have some extra items, too, that the previous store did not have, like Smucker's all-natural crunchy peanut butter, which I never succeeded in convincing the previous store to get. One time, they got a shipment by accident and they sold out very quickly. When I asked about this, the employee I asked just said, "Oh, it was a mistake," and was not at all interested in hearing that I thought it might be a good idea for them to stock it regularly! I'm glad to see that the new store is taking note that the crunchy kind sells much better than the smooth.

We live in an economically depressed area, and I have come to accept that we just can't have the variety that urban areas have. In fact, this simpifies life. But when I see businesses not taking customer interests seriously, I do worry that they are missing out on potential opportunities to improve economic conditions. So, while I did generally like the old store and was sorry to see it leave, I very much appreciate this new store's eagerness to respond well to consumer suggestions.

What Are We To Learn From Oil Spill?

2010-06-21T13:23:00.005-04:00

Like a lot of people, I have been greatly troubled by the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The first morning that I woke up to the news about the accident and the spill, I took notice, but on the second or third morning I woke up distinctly alarmed upon hearing that they had still not stopped the spill. "That's bad," I thought, sitting up in bed. "It already was bad, but this is really bad." I had the uneasy feeling that if they had not stopped it yet, maybe they really didn't know how.

Little did I know that we would still be watching with horror a full two months later.

There are lots of obvious lessons we already can learn from this, and I will not re-hash those. Instead, I thought I would share some thoughts I have not heard widely articulated (although it might just be that I have missed them).

1. Have we finally encountered a technical problem we simply cannot solve?

Ok, I have heard this view articulated a little, but I would like to reflect a bit on this anyway. To some extent, it is true in the present. We haven't solved it. Obviously, a lot of people greatly want this problem solved -- and some of those people have great power and resources available to them. Yet, the spill goes on. So, it is true that we cannot solve it -- yet.

But what are the reasons? It might be that the solution is out there -- perhaps submitted by someone or some group, but not yet considered by those who are processing the suggestions that people have sent in. Perhaps they even did consider it, but rejected it.

Or, perhaps the solution is out there and is even in the queue for future implementation -- after other suggestions are tried first.

Or, perhaps the solution (something that we humans could implement that would really work) has not been thought of by anyone yet. Will someone finally think it? Will that be a person who can get the idea heard by those who have the power to implement it? Will those in power be perceptive enough to see that it would work, and will they choose to try it?

Or could it even be that this just is impossible for humans to fix?

Mixed into my comments above are really two questions: (1) can humans technically solve this problem? (2) are our social systems organized effectively enough that if someone does find a technical solution, it can be identified and implemented?

2. Money and power are not enough.

I think this is a striking example of how money and power alone are not enough to solve all problems. We also need good ideas. These cannot simply be commanded.

3. Money is strange.

Something else that has really struck me is how calm BP seems to be about the money issue. All along, they've calmly said, "We'll pay," and tried to assure everyone that the company itself is in no grave danger from this setback.

I don't know what to make of this.

First I consider the possibility that they mean it. But if they do, if their fortunes are so vast that they can afford (a) the wasteage of their resource, (b) the money to try to stop the spill, (c) the money to clean up, and (d) the money to help out everyone who has economically suffered from this -- if all of this is truly no problem, then maybe they are not as worried about it all as the rest of us wish they were! Maybe that's why the problem is not being solved faster. Maybe it's par for the course for them. "These things happen; we'll figure it out eventually and will be able to afford it..."

But then my next thought is to be absolutely amazed at the thought of their having so much money. Why do they have so much money? All around me, I see financial worries. I see jobs being cut, programs being cut. For mysterious reasons that no one seems to understand, money seems to be evaporating. And, yet, a company like BP claims to be able to cover the huge expense of this oil spill no problem.

Is that where all the money has gone? It got sucked up by huge, profitable companies?

What would have happened to all of that money if the explosion and oil spill had not happened? Would it have stayed locked away wherever it was it had been hiding?

Why have we let our economic system evolve to this? Why do some individuals and some companies have huge amounts of money while others struggle to survive -- and some do not make it?

Of course, we have to consider the other possibility too: maybe BP is lying (or is self-deceived) about how much it really can afford. Maybe it's talking the talk but when it comes down to it will show itself unable to walk the walk. Then what?

4. It's not just about money, anyway...

Yet, the problem is not just an economic one. The health and well-being of many living organisms and ecological systems is at stake. This includes, but is not limited to, humans. The long-term environmental consequences remain unknown.

5. Theological perspective

As I ponder this situation and pray about it, I find myself explaining to God, "Look, we humans can be greedy, prideful, and misguided, but even in this we didn't really mean the harm that we have caused. We're just trying to tap into energy sources to fuel all of our activity, creativity, productivity. Is the earth so fragile that we puny creatures can really puncture a hole that turns into a mortal wound for the entire planet? Or, even if so, can it really be true that we have the power to create a problem that we lack the power to solve? Why should we have the power to create a fatal problem, and lack the power to solve this? Would You really have made us this way?"

And so I find my worry about this situation to potentially be a kind of faith crisis. What do I believe about the planet -- is it that fragile? What do I believe about human nature -- are we flawed in that way (able to create fatal problems we cannot solve)? And, deeper than all of this, what do I believe about God -- the kind of Creator and Sustainer that God is, the kind of Love God has for us?

And so when I arrive to these questions in my prayers, I find myself reassured. Yes, the problem is serious, but we must not give up. I've looked at video images and diagrams myself, wondering if I could learn enough to offer helpful suggestions. I've hoped that, even if not, my putting some thought in that direction may somehow summon the powers of our collective consciousness and help someone better trained than I in such matters to find a solution. I find myself believing in the power of prayer, for how it might aid the flow of ideas and insights within this shared mental space of collective consciousness. I try as well to summon the healing powers of the earth itself.

There is much that we can and urgently need to learn from a situation like this. I do wish that we could figure out how to live with better environmental sensitivity and care. I do think our exploitative attitude towards the natural world is problematic. I worry a lot that we have created a system in which we are becoming subservient to the care and feeding of monstrous systems that do not in fact take care of us and support our worthy goals, but serve only to benefit those who are already wealthy and powerful. For the collective spiritual well-being of all of us, as well as for the physical well-being of all life on the planet, we do desperately need to make changes.

And so I look for signs that this event might be a wake-up call. Maybe we can survive it and learn from it. Maybe it will inspire the kinds of changes that will help us to live more harmoniously with the natural world and with each other.

This is my prayer -- a prayer for a solution, and for redemption.

Future Imaging Workshops

2010-05-21T10:12:00.000-04:00

When I was an undergraduate student at a Quaker college, we did a Future Imaging Workshop as part of a Peace Studies class. This workshop was based on Elise Boulding's "Imaging a World Without Weapons" workshops, developed from the work of Warren Ziegler.

These workshops have participants individually imagine a better world 30 years into the future. Then individuals get together in small groups and share their visions. The small groups then share highlights with the full group.

Then, back in small groups, participants start thinking back from that point 30 years into the future as "historians," to try to "re"construct how the world "got" to this better place. What were things like one year ago? Five years ago? Another five years before that? Etc.

After the small groups construct these "histories," they share highlights with the larger group.

The final stage is to come back to the present and put yourself back in the picture: what are you going to do in the coming year that will help move the world towards this better future?

My doing this as an undergraduate had a profound effect on my life.

First of all, it gave me the confidence to be optimistic.

Secondly, it taught me that it's not that hard, after all, to come to reasonable consensus on what a better world looks like.

Thirdly, it gave my own life direction. It showed me how my emerging aspiration to become a professor could be part of creating a better future. I no longer felt so torn between my activist self and my scholarly self. I saw that the two could come together.

Now here I am, 20 years later, realizing I really have been doing this! I even started a Peace Studies program at my college!

So, what did I do to honor this realization?

Of course I had the students in my Peace Studies class do this workshop this semester!

Now, I knew that just because the workshop had a profound effect on me didn't mean that it would have the same effect on my students today. Sadly, the problems of the world seem more dire today. Also, I do not teach at a Quaker college, and our Peace Studies program is new: maybe our students are not as primed to get as much out of this workshop as I had been.

But I still wanted to try.

At the beginning of the semester, when I already challenged my students to consider what a better world would be like, I heard a lot of pessimism. The pessimism was not just about the possibility of a better world, but also about "whether we can even agree upon what this would look like," as the students repeatedly said. Inwardly I smiled to myself, thinking, "they have no idea how well-prepared I am to hear, and ignore, this pessimism!"

Throughout the semester, we studied a lot about peace and nonviolence, and the students were amazed, as usual, to learn how powerful and effective it all can be.

Then at the end, we launched into the workshop.

At the stage where they first met in small groups, I asked them to identify and note on paper the points of convergence in their visions, and the major differences. Then they had to talk through their differences, to see if any of them could be resolved. The assignment was set up to make it look like that phase was the central point of the assignment: the attempt resolve their differences.

I floated among the small groups to observe, and as the groups came to the "differences" question, I saw a tidal wave of alarm start to form and ripple from small group to small group. "We can't find substantial differences!" the students exclaimed to me as I would come around. "What are we to do?!"

When we re-convened as a large group, I had the students process this. "Come on," I said. "You couldn't find differences? What's going on? Are you all just being too polite?"

"No, really!" the students replied. "We have built enough trust in this course that we can be honest with each other! Seriously! We honestly couldn't find major differences!" The few differences they could identify were not so much about the vision as about preliminary thoughts about how to get to that better future.

The students talked with enthusiasm and excitement about how much this course had transformed them, about how they came into the course from very different positions, but what they studied really changed their thinking in substantial ways.

I let the students talk, and was myself amazed at the collective emergence of a realization that it really is not that hard to come to consensus on what a better world would look like. What most pleased me was their realization that their earlier pessimism was a false pessimism, a failure of imagination, rooted in ignorance (not knowing anything about the history of how positive change happens), and reinforced by laziness. "Thinking positive change is not possible is really just a rationalization for laziness," one student said while many others nodded. The energy level in the room was high. They glimpsed the excitement of devoting their own lives to change. They suddenly saw that they could make a difference--and their own lives would be more exciting and fulfilling if they tried.

In the workshop, they still had the hard task now of becoming "historians of the future" and then finally putting themselves specifically into the picture, but now they took on these challenging tasks with focus and commitment.

I saved reading their final papers until last, when I did the final grading for all of my courses. It was a good call. It is the first time I have finished up grading feeling really happy and hopeful. Their papers were creative, personal, complex, positive, and hopeful.

Yes, this workshop was every bit as powerful for them as it had been for me 20 years ago.

And my seeing the students through the workshop was powerful for me again too. This generation of young people is looking for hope, good ideas, direction. They care about the world's problems, and really do want to make a positive difference. Sadly enough, they are not given enough opportunities to develop hope. They are not challenged enough to move past a kind of habitual, cultural cynicism.

But if you make a space for young people to develop their hope and ground it in knowledge and skills, they participate eagerly. They are starving for hope that they can believe in. They want to live meaningful, positive lives. They don't actually like the facile cynicism they have inherited, but too often, it is that cynicism that is reinforced, and their occasional challenges to it get quickly shot down.

I feel pleased that I have helped let loose into the world a small band of optimists who are now better prepared to defend their optimistic stance and issue a challenge of hope to the cynics they encounter. They have seen through the facade. They know now that the cynicism is not rooted in anything real; rather it is rooted in something lacking: a lack of knowledge; a lack of commitment; a lack of confidence. They now know that knowledge, commitment, and confidence can be gained and developed. They now know that one's life is enriched by taking the time to cultivate hope and commitment.

And so I too am feeling more hopeful about the world again.

Some General Catching Up

2010-05-20T09:20:00.004-04:00

Academics

Another academic year has drawn to a close. It's been a full year, and in many ways a solid good year. But it has also been a year laced with anxiety as our university has been coming to terms with a changing economic context. "We have to do things differently," was the common refrain, but no one really knows what that means yet.

We've had financial concerns for years already, so we're used to it; but we also feel we've scaled back so much already it's hard to tell what more we can cut.

Our faculty is starting to shrink in the subtle way resulting from not hiring visiting replacements. Next year, we will be down one faculty member in our department because of not hiring a sabbatical replacement. Already this year, our classes have bulged. Next year they are likely to bulge even more. Since we are a small liberal arts college with reasonably small classes to begin with, I do not regard this as a catastrophe. My class sizes still are not what I had when I taught in graduate school, so I know I can handle this. But, still, it is a disappointment. It begins to change how we teach.

Right after final grades were due, I had two days of all-day faculty development workshops, then Commencement weekend, then two more days of workshops. Yesterday was the first break in this intense schedule. Yet I still had/have a lot to do.

Other updates:

Roof

Yes, my roof is finally being done. Right now, in fact. This very moment. The roofers arrived about 15 minutes ago. I should perhaps flee, but I'm kind of curious. And I also want them to feel welcome to help themselves to coffee, water, cookies.

My pulling snow off the roof all winter did prevent any further leaks, I am happy to report, but I am very glad to be getting the problem fully fixed now.

Lawn Mowing

Now that I have a house, I have to cut my grass. So I bought one of those non-gas-powered push mowers. I could feel the curious eyes of my neighbors on me as I pulled it out, put it together, and then got to work.

It worked like a dream! What's more, it was FUN! As I mowed, I wondered why people need gasoline. If you have a non-self-propelled push mower, you still have to push it around. What's the gas doing? Spinning the blades. Maybe that eases some of the work. But I didn't find my mower that hard to push around. It does give me a good workout, but I don't mind that. I welcome it. I need all the exercise I can get!

It takes me about an hour to do my whole lawn. It looks really nice when I'm finished. The mower makes a nice "flttt flttt flttt" sound -- much nicer than the sound of power mowers!

My neighbors come out and come over and talk with me when I cut my grass. They start by admiring my mower as they eye it skeptically, sure that something so simple could not possibly be very effective. So I gush about how wonderful it is. They admit it does a nice job.

How long will it be before I see another appear on the block? I'll keep you posted on this!

Music

I'm playing baroque flute at a memorial service in a couple of weeks. The memorial service is actually for the philosophy professor I replaced. I feel honored to have been asked to play. As the day approaches, I'm starting to feel a little nervous. I've never played for a memorial service before. What kind of music does one play? What is the music for -- comfort or catharsis or both? Have I chosen good pieces? Will I be able to do justice to the occasion?

I've also been learning piccolo, and I have just joined a community band for the summer, probably playing flute (modern flute), but I did indicate that I play piccolo too. Since modern flute and piccolo are not my main instruments (I would say baroque flute really is, followed closely by 19th century flute, a.k.a. Irish flute), I'm hoping to be seated last chair. There's a music school in my area, and I already know that all of the other flute players are accomplished modern flute experts, so no pride lost at all. I have a lot to learn about how to play this kind of music in this kind of context.

Running

The last time I seriously picked up running, I then twisted my ankle in a non-running moment. Although it was not a running injury as such, I think I was in a weakened condition from pushing myself too hard. At any rate, it sidelined me. Then the ice and snow came. So I lost it.

After a couple of false starts and long lulls again, I finally got it going again. I am in Week 7 of my new program, and it is going very well. Starting in early spring was a good plan -- the weather keeps getting nicer! So my hope is that by the time the weather changes again, I'll be so into this and so fit that I'll be able this time to keep it going through the winter, and forever thereafter!

I'm doing a lot better than I thought I would. But last week I did start pushing myself too hard. And then after 3 hours in the sun for graduation, I was so wiped out it was kind of scary. I realized I was fatigued on many levels, and told myself it was imperative to take an easy week this week. So this week I've refused to time my runs, and let myself return to walk/runs, based purely on how I feel from moment to moment. My "discipline" has been to not push. And I'm feeling much better. Sometimes this is what we need: the discipline to cut back, relax, let go a little.

Spirits

My move last fall dramatically changed my life and I'm much happier overall. But my life is still not completely where I want it to be. I still have not made the progress I want to make on my writing projects. I'm still half-thrilled, half-overwhelmed by my responsibilities in developing our new Peace Studies program. I still have too much a tendency to sacrifice my own goals in favor of what others want from me, but I'm better at catching myself, questioning that, and feeling more protective of and assertive of my goals. I realize I have a responsibility to nurture, develop, and live true to my sense of call -- no one else can do that for me.

So, I am making progress overall, even if that progress is slow. Slow but real progress is better than false progress, temporary fragile progress, or no progress at all.

State of the World

I am very worried about the BP oil situation in the Gulf and its environmental repercussions. I am also worried about the financial crisis.

I hold out hope that these problems are a wake-up call that will precipitate positive changes.

And I am ever alert to ways that I can, in my own daily life, encourage a more positive future.

Going Without a Grocery Store

2010-04-17T14:11:00.002-04:00

The grocery store in my small town closed last week. Before you worry too much about me, though, I hasten to assure you that another company has bought it and will renovate it and re-open it in a month or so. For a long time, we were not sure that even that was going to happen. So we went from worrying that we would be without a grocery store forever, to being relieved that we would only have to do without one for a month or so.

In the weeks leading up to the closure, the shelves got barer and barer. For a while, they kept re-stocking the basics, so even though you could tell something was changing, you still had confidence that you could get what you really needed. The first change was just that variety was reduced, but this was actually somewhat refreshing, simplifying your choices. Then there were things you wanted but didn't really need that weren't there anymore. You saw you could live without those. Then things you thought you needed weren't there any more, and you began to get creative with what was available -- so you realized those "needs" weren't real needs either.

Then they stopped restocking at all. Those last couple of weeks were most bizarre. A lot of people did give up at that point, and drove the extra 20-80 miles to shop elsewhere. But quite a few people continued to go, not so much for the great closing deals (80% off a jar of obscure mustard that you weren't even really sure would taste good, for example), but out of curiosity and maybe nostalgia. Whole aisles were now cordoned off. The meat section was closed. Unrelated items were corralled together at the ends of aisles.

Customers spoke kind words to the staff, and gently asked whether they'd have jobs with the new company. Many would not -- a hard blow in our already-poor area in this uncertain economy.

Occasionally, I would see an image of a grocery store in the paper, and it sent a strange pang through my heart. One was simply in one of the comics on the comics pages -- a cartoon family doing their grocery shopping while the cartoon kids acted up. I studied the drawing with a kind of amazement. "That's right!" I thought. "Most people have ordinary grocery stores, and think nothing of it!" Such an idea seemed exotic and far away. I studied the bananas and apples and oranges in the picture with considerable envy.

It reminded me of seeing pictures of home when traveling abroad, especially in third-world countries. Images of first-world luxury seemed like a far-off dream. I wasn't even sure they were really real.

So, now, I have a hard time believing that we will someday have a normal grocery store again.

The last day, most aisles were closed. About three of them had a few items on a couple of shelves near the aisles. One cash register was open. A few customers milled about slowly and quietly. No one was doing any serious shopping, but everyone tried to buy something, in order to have contact with the last cashier, to justify her last day of work.

Now the store is closed, and we wonder what transformation may be happening behind the dark windows. Many of us try to shop locally as much as possible: the health food store has increased their produce; convenience stores are carrying more basic grocery items than usual. Local restaurants are seeing a boom. My relationship with food seems different now. I have to plan more carefully, think about what I want or need and where best to get it.

It's going to be interesting to see how we all adjust to being without a grocery store for the next month or so. It shakes us not just individually, but collectively as well. In a small town, a grocery store is a common meeting place. Now we find ourselves running into each other in different places -- our collective social life is rearranged. We all relate to our town, and to each other, in new ways. It is actually somewhat refreshing.

The day the new store opens will be a big day. We will feel a sense of relief, and perhaps even amazement, when we all gather back at the site where we used to meet. But it will be different, and we will not be able to help but compare it to the dying days of the old. Our relief will be mixed with sadness for those who lost their jobs.

And we might be sad too for the return to normality after a time demanding creativity and innovation: a time that brought us closer to each other, remembering to rediscover and treasure what we still had.

But that day is not here yet. Now we embark on the new experience of exploring our village in new ways, seeing what we can find, learning what we most need and what we can do without.

Students and Colleagues and God

2010-02-28T09:28:00.004-05:00

I continue to work hard with my students (in two of my classes, actually) to help them understand God and religion in new ways.

Here are some of the latest moments:

In Modern Philosophy, we are now reading Leibniz, and went over his version of the Cosmological Argument (the argument that says there has to be a "First Cause"). To my surprise, some of the students were impressed with this argument. One then said, "Ok, I'm convinced that there has to be some uncaused cause as a first cause, but why call this 'God'? What does the notion of 'first cause' have to do with heaven and hell?"

"You are assuming that some notion of heaven and hell is necessarily part of the concept of 'God'?" I asked, for clarification.

"Well, doesn't it have to be?" the student replied, bewildered.

That launched us into a discussion about the meanings of powerful words, that led to questions such as "what does 'God' really mean?" "what does 'religion' really mean?" and "what does 'Christianity' really mean?"

There's a lot I could say about how I tried to reply to these general questions of meanings of words (very short summary: I keep trying to tell my students that philosophy teaches you to be multi-lingual in your own language, to hold tentatively to definitions of key words and be open to the variety of ways that others define these terms, and be clear about your own definitions when you use these words), but I'll fast forward to a particular moment in this discussion that amazed me.

While we were talking about "religion," I was trying to get students to see past what I described as the "abuses" of this word, when religion is used to scare people and control their behavior. "That's not religion itself -- that's an abuse of religion!" (Yes, I was departing in this moment from my flexible stance towards words, but that was because the students were so locked into their own cynical attitude towards the word, and I wanted them to see that that's not what religion meant to some of the philosophers we were studying.)

One atheist student was stunned and almost angry. He exclaimed in outrage, "how can you say that's not what religion is?! Of course that's what religion is! That's exactly what religion is -- wielding power to control what other people think and do!"

"No," I insisted. "That's the abuse of religion. Religion itself is something else entirely!" I then described it as a quest for understanding the nature of ultimate reality and humans' relationship to that reality. I described it as the questioning of whether the universe is just an accident, indifferent to life and consciousness -- or infused with consciousness, maybe even ultimately caused by consciousness, pervaded with love and care.

"But we can never answer these questions," one student said.

Another added, "I appreciate all that, but that's just 'thought' -- not religion!"

"Yes, let's just nix the word 'religion'" a third suggested, "and call what you are describing, 'thought.'"

I sighed. "Ok, we can nix the word, and replace it with a new one, but then people will seize onto the power of whatever new word we choose and abuse that one too. So we'll change it again. And again. And what happens every time we do that? We lose our history. We make a break from the earlier, nobler, original meanings of the words. In fact," I went on, "this tragedy has already happened -- and your inability to read the nobler meanings of these words when you are reading these philosophers demonstrates this tragedy. Why should we let the abusers of the language have the power to blind us to the nobler meanings? Why should we let the abusers of the language cut us off from really understanding the wisdom that history can teach us? Why should we be complicit in giving them this power?"

Class, unfortunately, was now over, but the students were buzzing as they left, bewildered, intrigued, and in some cases maybe even outraged. This is a lot harder than I would have thought!

Next incident: I go to a gospel concert. It is an amazing event. The singers represent many forms of diversity: not only black and white, but Native American and Asian. Young and old. Mentally handicapped, mentally ill, and highly functioning, highly successful. All sexual orientations. (I know all of this because I know many of the people.) All of these people are smiling and singing together. Their affection for each other is obvious. The message is love, freedom, and radical acceptance of each other. "Now that's Christianity!" I find myself thinking, wishing my Modern Philosophy students were there, and my peace studies students, but, sadly, none of them are there, except one peace studies student in the choir.

But even if they were there, it is doubtful that they would get it...

As I depart, I hear some murmuring from some of my friends and colleagues in the audience. "I liked the music, but I had a hard time with the words."

I considered the words again. Then I realized what was going on. And I was astonished. How could English professors, and liberal pastors, not be able to grasp the intended meanings of these words?

Looking again at specific phrases, I realized that the only way they could be offended was to read "God" as "human oppressive power," instead of reading "God" as "goodness" or "love." Why do they insist on doing this?

For example, one phrase from one song was "God is mighty."

Yes, "Human oppressive power is mighty" is problematic.

But, "Love is mighty"? "Goodness is mighty"? Don't these phrases inspire hope, and give strength in times of struggle?

Or: "Order my steps in your word."

Yes, "Order my steps in submission to human oppressive power" would be ridiculous, but look where this song comes from: descendants of slaves! Are they going to be meaning this? Of course not! Simple hermeneutics then indicates that there must be something wrong with this interpretation!

So, try this instead: "Order my steps along the path of love," or "Order my steps on the path of goodness." Now the meaning changes. It's about holding strong in real love, because love is hard. It's about looking for strength not to fall into the temptations of hatred, bitterness, and despair.

How can smart, thoughtful people not get this?! Why do they cling so tightly to a negative image of God, equating God with the worst of human oppressive power?

Third incident (this from a few years back, in another class): I ask the class which concept is supposed to be tied most essentially to God. They offer all sorts of suggestions, some promising, others alarming, but never mention the one I was thinking of, so I finally offer it myself: "goodness."

The class is stunned. "What does 'goodness' have to do with 'God'?" one asks, genuinely confused.

This student's image of God was that of a stern supernatural power, insisting that we play by a hidden book of rules: rules not at all easy even to find, and when you do, almost impossible to follow -- cutting against all that we find natural, enjoyable, meaningful. Unless we can figure this out, and live in the constant pain and suffering of this "obedience," we will suffer the divine punishment of going to hell.

Once I realize that that is what some (many) students think God is, I understand why they call themselves atheists! When I try to tell them this is not what everyone means by God, they think I am just making that up.

Final incident: I recently applied for a grant to work on my book project of reconciling science and religion, but didn't get the grant. One of the reviewer's comments said, in effect, that "religion is on its way out. Such a project is irrelevant." Most of the others reflected a similar sentiment, if not so directly. I wondered what planet they were living on. Meanwhile, at Harvard, someone recently proposed instituting a religion requirement because it is so important to have a basic understanding of world religions in order to understand events in the world, but this proposal was cut down on the grounds that it is not the role of universities to teach "faith" -- universities are to teach "reason." Not only does that argument rely on really problematic misunderstandings of "faith" and "reason," but it totally misconstrues the intended purpose of the requirement! The requirement is not to indoctrinate into faith, but just to give students a working sociological and cultural understanding of world religions in order to understand, for example, the difference between Sunni and Shia Islam.

So, no wonder I am having so much trouble. I had thought that the academic world was opening up to a reconsideration of religion, even a reclamation of a more sophisticated view of religion than the highly problematic caricatures offered by the media. This may be so, but the change is not happening easily or quickly.

So I understand why I am having the difficulties I do have.

But I am sad about this.

Students and God

2010-02-07T10:14:00.005-05:00

In Modern Philosophy, my students keep wanting to believe that the philosophers of the 1600s didn't really believe in God: they just had to pretend that they did, to avoid the wrath of the Church. I think my students really perceive all the God-talk as fake, meaningless, even maybe childish or primitive. They say they are "put off" by it.

I really try to challenge their preconceptions. I tell them that they are anachronistically reading on meanings that these philosophers did not intend. I encourage them to delete the word "God," and look in a new way at what they are actually saying: "What concepts are they associating with this word?" I have them labor over the text, while I write their findings on the board: "orderliness of the universe," "creator of all" (which I help translate as "the deepest grounding of all existence"), "omniscience" which I help translate as "everything that is is ultimately knowable by some consciousness," etc.

Then, I ask, "Do you believe any of this? Do you believe that the universe is orderly? How do you explain why there is something rather than nothing? What is the source of all being? It just accidentally came into being? How is that an answer and not a cop out? Do you think that everything that exists is at least theoretically knowable? What would it mean to exist but not be knowable at all, by any kind of consciousness?"

My students seem intrigued, or maybe even disturbed at the implication that their deepest beliefs might be something like belief in God. So, by the next class, they come back to the view that these philosophers don't really believe in God, or that's not really want "God" means, etc.

Or, even more bizarrely, they try to get around thinking about this by coming back (yes, back) to questioning Descartes' earlier claim, "I think, therefore I exist."

"You really question that?" I ask, showing my astonishment. "You really think that that is the most problematic aspect of Descartes' proof?!"

They try the Buddhist denial of Self.

"Descartes says nothing about 'self,' here!" I point out. "The claim he is making here is not the claim that Buddhists deny. Buddhism objects to sharp individuation, in favor of a view that emphasizes the interconnectedness of all being. That's very different from what Descartes is doing at this moment in his proof."

With reluctance, they turn their attention back to the God question then.

I thought it would be fun for them to realize that the notion of God may mean something more mysterious and interesting than they had originally thought, but their attitude suggests almost a moral stance against considering this in any way different from the blanket dismissal that they have been trained to make.

I am having more fun with this than it may seem. And I am certainly not trying to "convert" anyone -- I tell them "I'm not saying you have to believe this; I'm just saying you have to understand it before you are even in a position to decide whether you believe it or not."

But I am distressed at how dogmatic is their disbelief, especially when they think they are preaching against dogmatism!

This is going to be an interesting class. The students will find that the God question never does go away during the Modern period of philosophy (roughly 1600-1800). They will find that it is still not clear by the end of this time period that the notion of God is obsolete. The idea of a purely mechanistic universe develops by then, but many remain unconvinced -- and, anyway, by the early part of the 20th century, that image of the universe is found not to work because it is denied by quantum physics. The universe just is very strange--none of the oversimplified attempts to finally explain it completely have ever worked!

Taking Stock for a New Year

2010-01-21T22:09:00.004-05:00

Happy New Year!

Ok, I realize I've not been posting to any of my blogs for a while, and I apologize for this.

Catching up from the last few posts:

Music

My remaining concerts last semester went well, I think. I played silver flute with an orchestra accompanying a chorus, and this was a new experience for me: playing in an orchestra. Most of my playing has been top line in small ensembles, or solos. So I'm usually carrying a melody line -- it's like telling a story. Orchestral playing is very different. Your job is to weave colors into a tapestry of sound. Woodwind players may sit out for long periods of time, but then, suddenly, when they are on, they are often featured. This is stressful in whole new ways. Counting rests is surprisingly hard. If you lose count, how do you figure out when to come in?! My strategy was to listen to recordings of our pieces while looking at my music, to practice counting rests and to hear exactly where to come in. So I had back-up plans for if I lost count, such as, "when the trumpets come in, that's the second beat of measure 17 of my long 24-measure rest."

It was a new and different experience for me, but I enjoyed it. And picking up modern flute again inspired me to resurrect a long-abandoned dream: to play piccolo. I am finding it challenging and fun!

The next performances were my playing Irish flute at our big Christmas service on campus. This is a very popular event -- two services, one right after the other, during an evening in the last week of classes. Lots of people from the community come as well. My job was to arrive early enough to stake out a place right in the middle of the balcony, and, at the appointed time in the service, to play from there, so that the flute would waft down from on high.

I chose two pieces that blended well together -- the first reflective, even sad; the second lifting back to joy. I picked these up by ear, so I had no written score, which turned out to be good, because this was a candlelight service, and I was sitting in the dark.

As the service started, audience filled in tightly around me (many people not noticing that I had a flute, because, again, it was dark up there!) and the service started, and of course there was other music too, and I suddenly had a moment of panic: what if I forget how my pieces go? I had thought of this ahead of time, and trained my fingers to know how to start -- but would that really work? Fortunately, it turned out not to be a problem. During the Reading before I was to play, the music returned to my mind, and I was ready.

I stood up in response to the Reading, and played. I was shaking like a leaf, I think because it was intimidating being so closely surrounded by audience! But I was into the music, and I think it went well.

Then I realized I still had to do it all over again for the second service!

But that went well too. People afterward said that it was in fact an amazing effect -- they didn't know where I was. The music just filled the space. One person (a former student of mine) said she cried.

What a sacred opportunity, to be asked to offer music at such an event!

I am really glad that I had so many performance opportunities last semester! That was good for me in so many ways.

Teaching

My courses last semester were meaningful and good. This semester, my schedule is very full. I'm back to a full course load, with essentially three new preps, which means these are new courses. (In one case, it's actually a course I have taught before, but a long time ago, and I've completely revised it.) Oddly enough, all of my courses overfilled. In fact, I had to get new rooms for all three. And students are still asking to be let in! So, not only do I have three new preps, but my grading load is going to be large.

House

I still really love my house. There's a bit of a problem with part of the roof, so I have to pull the snow off that section of roof every time it snows, but I've mastered the technique and find myself enjoying adding this to my list of winter chores, along with shoveling the driveway and feeding the birds.

State of Being

Music has been good for me; my new house has been good for me; my teaching has been going well. And, yet, my state of being hasn't been great. I'm still struggling, at some deep level that I do not fully understand. A few years back, life was overwhelming me, which led to genuine burnout. Then I worked hard to simplify as much as I could, to allow for healing, and I felt some success in all of this. Life feels more manageable. I feel more confident in many ways, having come through all of that. Yet, I remain a little torn between competing interests, and a little frustrated at still not having as much time as I would like to have to write. Yet these frustrations do not in themselves seem significant enough to account for the current state of my soul.

So, I'm trying to figure that out.

Difficult Students

2009-10-18T09:50:00.000-04:00

In both of my classes this semester, I have some difficult students.

One student in my Peace Studies class has taken to lobbing ad hominem attacks at almost all of the authors whose books we are reading, as well as some of the guest speakers I have brought to class (though, thank goodness, not in their presence). Not only do these attacks feel mean-spirited, they also turn out to be replete with factual errors. I need to figure out how to deal with this more effectively when it happens. But also, I need to find out why this student has become so unhappy. I think the course is getting to him. I suspect he took it expecting to find it easy to hold his own against the major premises of the course, and this is turning out more difficult than he expected. It has thrown him into a panic.

In my other class, a class on ethical theories, a group of students argues (badly and incompletely) against literally everything. I finally stopped class the other day to point out that it amazed me to no end that they were arguing against the author we were now discussing since their arguments against earlier authors convinced me that they were naturalists and should therefore like the current author. "Help me understand what's going on here!" I said.

They gave me bewildered looks.

I was not sure whether they were actually understanding any of theories we were studying. I had also detected that they were using the same argument strategy over and over again. No matter what ethical theory we were discussing, they kept coming back over and over again to saying that there are people who seem not to care about morality at all, who do terrible things without remorse; therefore, who is to say that there are any moral absolutes at all?

First, I ask what their evidence is for this. They cite to movies they've seen! I say that doesn't count as evidence -- someone's just making that up. Then they cite dubious statistics they think they remember from psychology classes they've taken, but they are unable to follow that up with actual citations to research, or describe the research that supposedly supported such claims.

Realizing that this is all beside the point anyway, I then shift to trying to point that out. "Even if you are right that there are lots of immoral or amoral people out there who see no problem with doing terrible things, how does that undermine this moral theory that we are studying? Are you assuming that everyone in the world has to agree with something for it to count as true?"

A lively debate ensues that doesn't quite get to where I expected it to go. They keep coming back to "what gives someone the right to tell another person they are wrong?"

So, I try something else: "In real life, no one lets someone off the hook who has done something terrible just because that person sees no problem with what they are doing. We don't, in courts, say, 'oh, well, if you don't see it as wrong, that's okay then -- you are free to go!' So, ethical theories are trying to get at what is wrong about those behaviors that most people do regard as clearly wrong."

The students return to a line of discussion invoking cultural relativism. There are no behaviors that most people regard as clearly wrong, they try to argue. Maybe this is so within a culture, but somewhere, there is some culture in which any given questionable behavior is okay.

Since pointing out that cultural relativism does not imply moral relativism does not seem to get through to my students any more, I try to counter their last claim more directly. I point out that just because cultures may disagree about some moral claims does not mean that there is disagreement about all moral claims. "There is no culture," I point out, "that lets people freely kill whoever they want, whenever they want, for any reason, or even for no reason at all."

I thought that these arguments impressed the students and effectively made the intended points -- but then the next class session, they are at it again. New author, new ethical theory: "this is all a bunch of crap because some people think it's fine to do whatever they want, and so there are no moral absolutes. Who is [insert name of present author] to claim that he knows what is right and wrong -- who gives him the authority to tell everyone what to do?"

I sigh.

Usually in my classes, we don't get so stuck like this. I'm trying to understand why this is happening. My unhappiness with this is similar to my distress at the rhetorical strategies employed in the political arena these days. Maybe they are related. Maybe my students are too influenced by what they see in the news. Maybe they genuinely have trouble distinguishing between actual arguments and other rhetorical strategies that are not actually arguments.

At least in the ethics class, they are trying, to some extent, to construct arguments, but they do not seem to be grasping that they keep arguing against the whole project of ethical theory itself rather than constructing arguments against particular ethical theories. It derails us from discussing the particular details of different ethical theories. I'm almost suspicious that this is an intentional diversionary tactic to avoid serious engagement with the particular theories, but I am not sure about that. The students do show evidence of doing the readings and engaging some details of the readings. I do not think that they are slackers. But I do think they might feel threatened by the prospect of taking ethical theories seriously.

And so the cases in both classes are somewhat similar: students catching glimpses that how you live your life (ethics), and how you engage conflict (peace studies) are questions that really matter. They catch glimpses that there might be something wrong with the standard answers they receive. This shakes them up and so they try to change the subject, by attacking peripheral aspects of the emerging new insights.

I share this because I feel that we are at a crucial stage. I want to handle this well. I worry that if I don't, they will lock into their resistance. But right now, there is still hope that I can help them into more serious examination of points of view that are different from what they have considered before.

A Musical Update

2009-10-16T22:40:00.005-04:00

I really love my house. Slowly, I'm getting settled. I still walk around gawking, amazed, saying to myself, "this is my house!" and can hardly believe it.

Meanwhile, I've now had three of my concerts, and two more have been added, so there are three more to go.

The first was a concert in which I played silver flute. The director of my early music ensemble had never heard me play silver flute, and he was impressed enough that he has asked me to join an orchestra he is assembling for a choral concert he is directing. We will have two performances. This is not early music! I've worked on my part, which is easy to play but strange to count -- passages in 5/4 time, or 3/2 time (mixed in with more standard 3/4 and 4/4 passages). I have had no orchestral experience at all, so I don't know if this is normal or not. I used to play with concert bands at times, but that was a long time ago. I don't have a melody line, as such (well, actually I do have one for just one fleeting moment). Most of the time my part is just to add color, I think. This will be a very new experience for me! Most of my recent performing experience has been small-ensemble playing.

So, anyway, my first performance did go well. I accompanied a small group of singers on two pieces.

The second performance was a reprise of one of those pieces for a different event.

The third performance was a number of recorder trios as part of an early music concert. (Yes, in this small way, our early music group is back! I'm really glad!) We played four sets of renaissance pieces in this concert.

I was nervous before the first concert, but once I started playing, I was able to focus on the music and get into it.

I was even more nervous before the early music concert, because I was keenly aware of all that could go wrong. At our dress rehearsal, our recorders clogged badly (a hazard this time of year because of rapidly changing temperatures and humidity levels). For those who don't know, clogging is when the water vapor from your breath condenses in the instrument in a way that it blocks the very narrow passage that the sound comes out of. As you can imagine, a blockage to the area where the sound is supposed to come out creates strange and unexpected sounds. There are ways to try to prevent this, but nothing is foolproof. And there are ways of dealing with this when it happens in performance, but this is not foolproof either. So there is always the serious danger that a major clogging incident could disrupt the performance.

I took all of the preemptive action I could and hoped for the best. My strategy ended up working. I had no clogging problems. The other members of the trio each had minor problems that they were able to address on the fly.

Meanwhile, I suffered other physiological effects of nervousness: shaking, sweaty hands, and the worst: dry mouth. Yet I stayed focused, and things went well, and gradually all of these symptoms disappeared. By the last and most challenging (but also the most fun) piece, I was relaxed and eager to show the audience how wonderful this piece was, and I think it went very well. It was nice to have entered the Zone in performance! That's what a musician most hopes for. We catch those moments in rehearsal sometimes, but it's harder to find in performance because of the stress of performance situations, unless you are very experienced.

It's nice to receive this confirmation that: (a) nervousness is not in itself necessarily fatal to a performance, and (b) it can actually go away during the performance!

So, the next two concerts are the choral concerts where I will be playing silver flute as part of the orchestra. Then I actually have two more concerts after that: two performances on Irish flute as part of a special Christmas event.

I have other updates too, but I'll save these for another posting.

New House!

2009-09-27T10:03:00.002-04:00

I've moved into my new house and I really love it! I'm still getting settled, but I just succeeded in getting my computer set up, hence this update.

The worst thing that has gone wrong was that I realized that the room that I want to use as a study did not have a phone plug installed (hence no internet access), but I solved this problem by buying a 50-ft. phone cable. It meanders across the room and across the hall to the one room upstairs that does have a phone plug. Next step: figuring out how to string it across the ceiling so that I don't have to keep unplugging it between uses to make sure no one trips over it. Anyway, if that's the worst problem I've had, it's not so bad, eh? What's fun is that I keep discovering unexpected nice things about this house that I hadn't noticed before!

I'm only a few blocks from where I was before, but suddenly my life feels dramatically different. My walk to my office is now across campus -- and a beautiful part of campus. The house and the gardens are beautiful. The neighborhood is very friendly -- I know most of the people on my street. And I'm now living in a house I own -- this is the first time in my life I finally feel that I'm not living in someone else's space. This is the first move in my life that doesn't feel transitional. This is a place I could (and probably will) remain the rest of my life -- happily.

I counted up the moves I've made in life: 25 major moves (requiring changes of address). That's a lot!

So the move itself wasn't bad. I realized as I got into it, "I know this all too well." I have a system. I am well-experienced. I know how to pack things. I know how to break down boxes again after unpacking.

It's still amazingly chaotic and disruptive. Once I got into it enough that it hit me that my life was seriously going to change, I did hit a moment of weariness and despair. This was about this time last week. My life felt turned inside-out. There was still a lot to do. Physically it is hard work. And moving is also emotional.

I just told myself to keep going, one step at a time. Moving day was Monday. The actual shifting of stuff did not take long (under three hours). Then I went to campus, and after attending to the bare essentials at work, I returned to clean up my old place. As I left to come to my new house, I appreciated the moment. "Here I am at last, arriving at my new life."

I put a folding chair out on my new deck and poured myself a glass of orange-mango juice and went out to sit on the deck to celebrate my arrival in my new life. I had long envisioned this moment, and had had periods of doubting that it ever could or would happen. Now here I was. It was not exactly like I expected: for one thing, it was dark (I had envisioned the moment in the daylight, looking out over the beautiful garden). But it was a nice warm evening. As I relaxed to enjoy the peaceful evening and the sense of arrival, I suddenly started crying. It was happy tears, plus exhaustion.

I didn't linger long, because there was still much to do so that I could be functional enough to resume work the next morning!

I am liking my new life very much. It feels full of potential and promise.

New Updates

2009-09-13T10:45:00.003-04:00

New Semester

My semester is getting off to a pretty good start. The students in my classes are very engaged. One class goes galloping off full speed in all directions -- I love their energy but it is a struggle to channel this energy productively. It's early enough in the semester that I am not worried -- I have confidence that we can connect this energy to more forward motion.

I am even feeling reasonably caught up with grading! So, even though I started off the semester already feeling a little behind (see earlier posting), to my surprise, I caught up again. How did this happen? There are two important factors at play. One is that I am no longer department chair. The other is that I have a course release this semester and so am only teaching two courses.

Not being department chair makes a huge difference in my life! There is a lot that no longer comes to me. A few things still do, but I can just pass them off to the new chair. I have been keenly aware of how much this simplifies my life and opens up time.

I do still offer advice and support to the new chair. And she is taking all of this on with cheerfulness, even saying, "I think I do better when I am very busy!" And, although I wonder how long her good cheer will last (it might last!), I am content for both of us to ride our respective cheerfulness as long as we can! Right now it's working. I will let it work! And I really do have confidence that she can handle this well over the long-term.

My life is still not simple, as such. I still coordinate our new Peace Studies program, and there is a lot to be done to continue to develop this. But last year I was doing both. It's nice to be able to focus my energies a bit more.

Music

Also, music is returning to my life, which makes me very happy. I have four performances coming up: one on recorders, two on modern silver flute again, and one on Irish flute.

It's been an amazing experience coming back to the modern flute, after a long time of not touching it because I shifted my attention to the historical flutes. Modern flute really is a much easier instrument. But I'm not all the way back. I regained a lot of where I had been very fast -- I'd say that 75% came back in just a few days of serious practice. Then I plateaued. With a lot more hard work, I can reach 80% on a good day. I hope to reach 90% by concert day, but I might not make it. Still, my fellow performers seem pleased with where I am. One said, "it is such a joy to play with someone who is so musical," and I nearly fell over. When I confessed that I had not seriously worked with this flute for 18 years and I felt I was really struggling, she was surprised.

Embouchure comes and goes. The mark of 90% will be when I feel more consistently in control of tone quality. The high notes are really easy to hit in comparison to wooden flutes, but hard to play well, with fullness and richness of tone. They still sound thin and weak. The fingering patterns are much easier on this flute (one of the major reasons for the total re-design), and so once they came back, that part has been joyously easy.

Then there is playing style. On historical flutes, you use less vibrato. You work hard to get a rich, interesting, beautiful sound without vibrato. But the expectation with modern flute is to use vibrato more. And since I'm playing music written with this expectation, I have to go back to that style of playing. At first I felt resistant, not wanting to undo all the years of work of learning a different style. Finally I just told myself I have to trust myself now to be able to switch back and forth as appropriate. And as I leaped back into the way I used to play, I felt a mixture of amazement and joy that it was all still there and I could let it come back.

But everyone is noticing that I'm playing a little too carefully, and they tell me, "trust your instincts." They even add, "you do have good musical instincts!" What's hard at the moment is playing so many different styles on so many different instruments. But I want to be able to do this: switch back and forth. So, ironically enough, I have to work hard at letting go!

In the recorder concert, I will be playing three recorders. Some professional musicians will coach us tomorrow during a rehearsal.

Recently someone saw me with my flute case, and asked, "Is that a flute?" "Yes," I replied. "So, you are really a musician at heart, but took up philosophy in order to make a living?" I laughed and said, "Something like that!"

What struck me as really funny about that was the image of taking up philosophy as a pragmatic way to earn a living! Philosophy as a fall-back plan. Philosophy as a "day job."

Yet, this is kind of how my life is! The only real correction I need to make to that person's analysis is that I really do love philosophy too. In fact, I cannot honestly say which I love better. I just feel lucky that I get to do both.

House

I do finally have a closing date on my house. It's starting to feel real again. I am hoping to move soon. Then my life will look and feel very different. I am looking forward to it. I am even actually looking forward to the move itself as a creative opportunity! I will have to enter chaos for a bit, but that chaos is a necessary stage to create the opportunity for establishing a new order to my life.

Health Care Reform

2009-09-07T08:42:00.002-04:00

I've been wanting to share thoughts on the health care debates in the U.S., but thought I should read H.R. 3200 first. It's very long. There is a nice summary, though, on the Library of Congress legislative information pages.

I am bewildered about why anyone is opposed to this.

To those who are, what specifically do you object to? And, how do you think health care should be paid for?

Should we just each pay for our own health care out of pocket? What about those who cannot afford to do so?

Should our employers pay for our health care? Why them? What if they cannot afford it? What if this is what makes it hard for many employers to stay in business? (Note that this really means that we all pay for each other's health care. Every time you pay money to a business that covers health care or health insurance for its employees, you are helping to pay for their health care.)

Should all health care be paid through health insurance? Who should pay the health insurance premiums? And, why pay for health care via health insurance companies? These are companies that are trying to make a profit, so they deny some claims. And they want to make money above and beyond covering their costs (profits) -- why do we want to pay extra money, above and beyond actual costs, for our health care? And why do we trust health insurance companies (who, again, are trying to make money) to make the decisions about whether to cover our health care costs or not?

Those lucky enough to have health insurance through their employers tend to assume that they will be well-covered if they should need expensive health care. But have you checked the details of your policy lately? You might be surprised at what is not covered, and at how much you would actually have to pay if you developed major health issues.

Have you tallied how much you and your employer have paid into the health insurance company, and compared that to how much your health care has actually cost? If you haven't cost as much money as you have paid in, are you glad that some of that money you and your employer have paid in has covered the health care costs of others? If so, why not support a government-run health care system, or a public option? At least a government system would not be trying to earn profits above and beyond covering costs, and so the extra money you have paid in would go farther than it currently does. If you have health insurance and have paid in more than your health care has cost, some of that extra money has paid for your health insurance company's profits. So, in addition to helping cover other people's health care costs, that extra money you and your employer have paid has also gone into giving shareholders some extra money.

If you have cost a lot of money, do you realize that the extra money above and beyond what you and your employer have paid in has come out of the payments of those who have not required as much health care? Have you thanked your healthy work colleagues, and those who pay for the goods or services your place of employment provides, for their contributions to your health care?

Have you ever thought you were covered for something that it turned out that you were not covered for? Have you ever refrained from seeking adequate medical attention because of concern for how much it will cost? Do you know someone who has been in this position?

I really do want to understand the point of view of those who are opposed to reforming our system. It seems so obvious to me that there are serious problems with how we have structured health care in the U.S., that I honestly do not understand why there is resistance to change.

Life Keeps Surprising Me

2009-08-27T21:42:00.003-04:00

One of the strange things I did not realize about buying a house is that everyone ignores the closing date you write into your purchase agreement. After all the paperwork and inspections are done, you wait and wait and have no idea when closing will be or when you can move. You want to plan, but you cannot. You just wait. When you dare to ask, people just shake their heads and say it could be weeks...or more.

This is bizarre.

Yet, it turns out kind of good that I couldn't move when I had hoped to do so, because I needed to attend to a crisis situation: a good friend in the hospital with some mysterious high "fever of unknown origin." After more than a week, the illness finally seems under control, but the friend is likely to need extra help after being released from the hospital.

Meanwhile, classes started. I appear for class, and (surprisingly) manage to teach, and then I'm back to the hospital.

Boxes. Half-packed stuff. Hospital. Worry. Semester starting. Students all over the place again. Colleagues needing all kinds of advice or input from me.

And people ask me, "How was your summer?" and I have no idea how to answer.

I see them stressing (in that happy, giddy, start-of-a-new-year sort of way) about the normal start-of-semester chaos and I feel very far away. If only that was all I had to worry about.

Basic Principles of Self-Care

2009-08-21T17:02:00.005-04:00

I thought it might be helpful to list the basic principles of self-care. I find I need to keep reminding myself of these! Self-care still does not come easily to me.

Establish and stick to a regular sleep schedule, giving yourself enough high-quality sleep.
Eat healthily. The basic recommendation seems to be lots of fresh vegetables and fruit, plus some protein. Minimize simple carbohydrates (grains -- especially refined grains -- and sugar).
Get regular exercise. Build cardiovascular fitness, strength, and flexibility.
Build a good support system for yourself. Surround yourself with people who like you in ways you like yourself, and who bring out your best. Be supportive of them too, bringing out their best.
Cultivate mindfulness. Be aware. Pay attention. For example, be aware of your emotions, and don't be afraid of them: learn from them. Be aware of habits of thought and habits of behavior: change those that are not serving you well. Be aware of your effect on the world, and the world's effect on you. Be aware of the present moment, of what is real right now, and all of the richness of possibility that is available right now.
Keep stress to a minimum. Some stress maybe cannot be avoided, but sometimes stress is self-generated, or can be alleviated by making different choices.
Develop effective strategies for coping with the stress you do have to deal with.
Avoid unhealthy addictions or compulsions. Or, if necessary, seek help in recovering from those already established.
Enjoy all that is worth enjoying. And regularly do things you enjoy. Being in nature, coming into contact with beauty or greatness, being creative, learning something new, or spending times with those we love: these are some examples of renewing, enjoyable activities.
Cultivate a a "realistic positive" attitude. Be alert to negative thinking, and rework it into realistic positive reminders and aspirations. Also, cultivate a sense of humor towards those challenges of life that deserve being laughed at.
Be in touch with who you most truly are, and with the meaning of your life. What do you value? Who and what do you love? What greatness does/can your life bring into being?
Know when to seek help, and do not be afraid to ask for it. Most people feel honored to be asked to help. Helping each other is one of the sacred activities of everyday life.

Time for General Updates

2009-08-16T11:48:00.004-04:00

I've had an interesting summer of trying to make certain changes in my life that hopefully will allow me to live more true to my contemplative nature. Some of this has been very hard. But once I got the process seriously under way, I found way opening (hence my last posting). Certain things started falling into place. There have still been ways the journey has been hard, and doubts and anxieties were never fully erased, but overall, I have felt a sense that I am on the right path.

One of the manifestations of the change is that I am buying a house. Earlier in the summer, I thought, "wouldn't it be great if I bought a house this summer and moved and then started my new life?" I would have these flashes of a "vision" of where the house would be (which neighborhood). I saw nice gardens, and the house was red. These were like daydreams, except that they would come to me spontaneously. In truth, I did not believe that this would be possible. I felt deeply stuck and dangerously "tempted by despair" (to paraphrase George Fox). From a rational perspective, this seemed totally impossible. It was a long-term vision for my life, not a short-term one.

The vision was odd in some respects. The neighborhood I envisioned was one of the most desirable and expensive neighborhoods in my small town. I do not have a special fondness for red houses in particular. And, while I like nice gardens, I am a little daunted by the efforts required to maintain nice gardens. So I would think that my "vision" would be a more modestly-colored house in a humble but quiet neighborhood with a small, neat yard, but no fancy gardens.

Yet, my "vision" re-appeared with a compelling sense of impending reality. It's hard to describe. This sort of thing has happened to me before, so I took it seriously. Yet I could not believe it.

Then one day I heard of a house for sale. And yes, it was a red house in that neighborhood, with beautiful gardens. In fact, it was a house I had admired but never dreamed would come up for sale (I knew the people who lived there, and assumed they were here to stay). And the price, surprisingly, was within reach.

That shook my world. At the time, my despair was high and my energy was low -- but as soon as I saw this news, my soul was electrified and I knew that everything would change. And everything did.

The full story is dramatic and maybe would be worth telling some day, but for now I will just say it looks like this is in fact really happening. It's possible that I will be moved into my new house and my new life in a week (yet the exact moving day is still uncertain, so I don't know yet).

Meanwhile, the school year is also soon to start. And so, yes, on the surface, I feel plunged into chaos. Managing a move at the start of a school year is, in general, not a good idea! Yet, I am happy and dealing with the uncertainty remarkably well. And I think that is a good sign.

Way Will Open -- Or Not?

2009-07-29T15:51:00.004-04:00

When Quakers engage in discernment, often we suggest to each other that if it's meant to be, "way will open." On the internet, I see that "way will open" is also cited as a "Zen proverb," but the full statement of this version is: "Move and way will open."

The experience of way opening is thrilling, affirming, and encouraging. We do feel reassured that we are on the right track when this happens.

But what does it mean when way doesn't open, at least not easily or immediately? It is tempting to take this as a sign that the path we are trying to take is really not the right one, but is this always the case? Social change is often met with resistance at first. If social activists took resistance as a sign that their vision for change is all wrong, nothing would ever change, because all change, being change, meets with at least some resistance. If you study historical examples of transitions from injustice to justice, you see that the resistance can be considerable, and the most successful movements are successful because the activists are prepared for resistance. They expect it, and have strategies for holding strong in the face of it.

So too in our personal lives, times of important discernment are times of personal change, and so some resistance (internal and external) is to be expected. These times of resistance can feel like way NOT opening, and so at these times, discernment can be especially difficult. Do we proceed? If so, how?

I do not have a comprehensive answer to this very important question. I can just speak from experience about one possible answer.

Sometimes if you push and nothing happens, and then push again, perhaps more hesitantly now, and still nothing happens, and then you push yet again, weakly, with growing uncertainty, and then start making token pushes out of habit, and then carefully reassess everything from the ground up all over again, and feel convinced that this really is the right path, and feel frustrated that the universe is not at all helping, and wonder what this all means, and wonder if the whole meaning of your life is going to end in pathetic frustration, and then you push again now fully expecting nothing to continue to happen...

Way still might suddenly open miraculously before your very eyes.

Lifting Oneself Up By One's Bootstraps

2009-07-21T09:50:00.006-04:00

Continuing my theme from last time...

While the Catch-22 of Depression can feel as impossible as lifting oneself by one's bootstraps (absolutely impossible, according to the laws of physics), the real state of being is actually not so bad. The link I pointed out last time is really helpful, as is this website too.

The key is this concept: "for all the energy you put in to your depression recovery, you’ll get back much more in return" (from the second website linked above).

So if, with what little energy you have, you put that energy into action that is known to be helpful, you'll get back a little more energy than you put in, so that now you have even more to put into further healthy action, etc. The key is to be patient but persistent.

The actual effect made me think that the depressing power of depression actually operates according to an inverse-square law, like gravity. Initially it is very hard to escape. But if you hold steady in those initial efforts until you get far enough away, it gets easier. A lot easier. The force-field weakens significantly with distance. But you have to hold steady in your initial efforts. If you let yourself fall all the way back, you have to start over again, and it will be hard all over again.

The known ways to help alleviate depression are simple principles of a healthy life: sleep, good nutrition, exercise, building supportive relationships, minimize stress and develop healthy responses to the stress you cannot avoid, break bad habits of negative thinking, replacing the negative thinking with realistic-positive thinking, seek fulfilling experiences and let yourself enjoy them when you can, and increase awareness of your emotional states and their triggers.

Even if applying these principles does not address all of the causes of your depression, they can help you gain strength and energy to make whatever other changes you may need to make in your life. And, regarding those changes, a similar method of operation applies: take what steps you can. Start small. Making some progress will give you back positive energy that will help you take additional, perhaps harder, steps.

There are likely to be set-backs. There are two kinds of set-backs: (1) plummeting mood, and (2) falling back and losing ground. Often #1 leads to #2. So if you catch #1 in time and can talk yourself into just stopping in your tracks but not retreating, riding out the mood, you may prevent #2.

Becoming worried, anxious, fearful, doubting, sad, angry, etc. are normal in the midst of change. Don't let those moods scare you! Don't read cosmic significance in them. Don't make new decisions in the midst of these states of being. Just listen to them and see how long they last. Move into them; even perhaps precipitate their acceleration (by, e.g., letting yourself cry). While it is not fun to experience these emotions, they in themselves will not harm you. In fact, letting yourself experience them fully gives you strength. And they never last forever. They burn themselves out. Only after you are calm again are you allowed to reassess your plan of action (preferably with the help of trusted friends or guides).

But if #2 happens and you later regret it, all is not lost. Try again. Your awareness of your regret will help give you strength not to give in next time.

The difficulty of making major life changes is a topic I am going to address in an upcoming series of postings I will call, "Difficult Discernment."

The Catch-22 of Depression

2009-07-13T16:33:00.004-04:00

Sometimes depression is situational. This means its cause is not internal and physical (e.g., brain chemistry). Instead, the cause is that there is something in the person's life that is not right.

The person can even know this, and know how to make the requisite changes in their life, but find it difficult, perhaps even impossible, because the depression then makes it hard for them to make big changes. This predicament -- life circumstances making a person so depressed they cannot change their life circumstances -- is what I think of as the Catch-22 of Depression.

The person may feel trapped under a boulder so heavy that they cannot get out from under it.

Here is my question: can this really happen? Or is there always a way out?

Can a person always find the strength himself or herself (e.g., if he or she prays enough)? Or is the help (or even intervention) of others sometimes required -- and if it doesn't come through, the person is doomed? Or, sometimes, is even good help from others not enough?

(My question is really a theological one -- it's a question about the exact nature of divine goodness.)

P.S. Apparently I am not the only one to conceptualize depression this way. Jon G. Allen wrote a book on the Catch-22 of Depression, called Coping with Depression, in 2006. Here is a summary. Very helpful!

On Being Disciplined About Blogging

2009-07-06T16:24:00.003-04:00

Aware that I have not been blogging as much lately, for a lot of complex reasons (never mind the name of my blog! You'd think that would inspire me to use the blog to process said complexity!), I've wondered how much blogging should be subject to inspiration (being led by the spirit), and how much it should be a matter of discipline, intentionality, commitment. For example, I am inspired by the regularity of Johan Maurer's blog, ("published every Thursday (mostly)," as he says on his site).

So, I've started experimenting with being more disciplined about my own blogging -- not here, but on Bible Wonderings (a posting every Sunday), and a new blog I've created, A Query a Day (every day).

I haven't announced this yet here, until now, because I wanted to try it for a couple of weeks to see if I could really sustain it. I'm still not sure. But I am finding it interesting to try! A Query a Day seemed simple and excellent at first, and then I went through grave doubts for a few days, feeling a bit burdened and trying to avoid the temptation of becoming frantically random just to keep it up. Then suddenly during a late evening when I had almost forgotten to post something and was frantically looking for something (forcing myself nonetheless to follow all of my "rules" of the new posting not being too similar to the one before, and from a different Yearly Meeting, and yet reflecting authentically something meaningful to me in my own life at the moment), I realized that this was good for me. It was good for me to be honest with myself about what's real in my own life, and to try to take that from being just about me to presenting it in a way that maybe others might find value in as well. I have no idea whether anyone is reading that blog at all. It may not ever be something that would be meaningful to anyone else. But I love queries, and I realized in that moment that this has become a new and important spiritual discipline for me -- to consider and post one per day that helps me to keep focused in my life on the values and reflection-questions that matter most to me.

At Meeting yesterday I discerned that it was time for me to start writing my own queries. I'll still draw from the ones from various Yearly Meetings (and other Quakerly sources) I have collected as well. It still feels experimental to me. I feel led, at the moment, to continue to be disciplined about this! But if I should stop feeling so led, I will let this go.

Bible Wonderings is something I feel led to continue no matter how long it takes! Slowly I make my way through. I've started Kings now. The weekly discipline of this is good for me and interesting. Doing it weekly helps me not lose the thread and forget where we were. What sometimes stalls me is that I don't always know what to say. Sometimes I'm very dismayed by the stories. I'm certainly getting tired of all of the violence and all of God's anger, and how the rulers who should know better by now keep making the same mistakes. It's hard to keep track of who everyone is.

Yet, through all of that, I am actually utterly fascinated. I am in awe of the fact that we have access to these ancient documents. I am moved by the struggle of the authors to make sense of what to them must have been a bewildering history: a history never fully arriving at the state of peace and reverence that they expected, or at least not for very long. Reading straight through like this is giving me a new perspective on a tradition and a heritage that includes you and me but that I, for one, realize I hardly know at all. For all the difficulty of these writings, they have meant a lot to a lot of people and have shaped our ways of thinking much more profoundly than most of us realize. (Even those who do not identify themselves with these traditions cannot help but be affected by them at least to some extent in today's world.)

So, for now, I will try to keep a disciplined approach to blogging in those two blogs, but will save this one, Embracing Complexity, my very first, for what I feel moved to write, when I feel so moved.

No Longer Chair

2009-07-01T15:53:00.004-04:00

As of today, I am officially no longer the Chair of the Philosophy Department!

Surprisingly, I am feeling a bit blue about that.

But it is a good development in my life. It frees me to devote more time to my research and writing. After being chair longer than not being chair in my academic career so far, I have been ready to let it go for quite some time. And I'm in the wonderful situation of being very happy about who is now becoming chair.

I am still Program Coordinator of Peace Studies. So my administrative life is not over -- just more manageable, at last.

Despite the fact that I never wanted to be chair, I am glad I did it. I learned a lot, and even grew to like it in many ways. There were a lot of challenges. But there were also wonderful creative opportunities. I feel good about where the department is these days.

And I'm feeling ready to focus my energies more specifically and more fully in other directions now.

More on Mediation

2009-06-28T11:21:00.003-04:00

I continue to think a lot about all that I learned in the recent mediation training I attended.

We learned that good mediation requires discipline. The particular kind of discipline it requires is that you have to get out of the way. The version of mediation we learned in a kind in which the mediator is not supposed to interject his or her own suggestions or opinions. This is because this version of mediation is one whose purpose is to empower the participants. But there is also a pragmatic consideration. If the participants start looking to the mediator as an authority or expert, or begin to think that they need, to some extent, to please the mediator, not only is their confidence in themselves diminished, but they become less likely to take full responsibility for the agreement reached, since it was not their own agreement, but something borrowed from someone else's suggestion. They don't feel a full sense of ownership. Thus they are not as inclined to invest themselves fully into it. If it goes wrong, they can blame somebody else (the mediator).

But if the mediator is not making suggestions or offering advice, what is the mediator's role? It is primarily to listen well: to listen through emotional and often harsh language to the underlying issues and needs, and reflect those back in neutral language. First the mediator lets the participants vent (while still ensuring all participants' protection). Throughout, the mediator listens carefully to what issues and needs emerge. Then the mediator frames the issues and needs in neutral, non-blaming language, always checking with the participants to make sure she or he is hearing them correctly. Finally, the mediator frames good clear questions of how each issue can be solved in a way that addresses Participant 1's need for X and Participant 2's need for Y. It's up to the participants to actually answer these questions by brainstorming possible solutions, and finally selecting one.

Does the process work? Often it does. Sometimes there is an impasse. But the person who facilitated our training has a lot of confidence in the process if the mediator stays disciplined and focused on letting the participants find their own solutions. In fact, he suggested that an impasse is when the participants do not find the mediator's own secret preferred solution!

How much are we willing to really trust others? How capable are we of letting go of the need to control everything ourselves?

These strike me as very important questions.

Mediation Training

2009-06-11T14:53:00.002-04:00

I attended an intensive mediation training program over the weekend (32 hours of training in 4 days!). It was an amazing experience. I know that mediation is hard work. I also knew that this training would involve role playing and other experiential exercises. So I was terrified, to be honest. Half of my fear was that I would find it overwhelming. The other half of my fear was that I would find the training disappointing in some way. But it turned out that it went way above and beyond even my most hopeful expectations.

I found the training to be an excellent blend of explaining and discussion followed by well-designed exercises that did help us integrate what we had learned. The exercises were followed by excellent personalized feedback and high-quality large-group debriefing. Not only did I learn a lot about mediation, I also learned a lot about teaching.

The most liberating part of the training was learning that it is not our job to calm people down or get them to "play nice." Instead, as mediators, we ride their energy. We let them use their own language. We let them have their own emotions. We don't try to control any of this. We don't judge. We just listen to understand, and in trying to understand, we calmly re-frame the loaded language into unloaded language until everyone naturally becomes calmer and more focused and ready to start thinking more creatively about the issues.

There's a lot more to be said than this, but this piece in particular was powerful for me, because I am on a journey of learning not to be so afraid of conflict and strong emotion. It is amazingly empowering to learn (experientially) that when we meet conflict and strong emotion with a compassionate desire to understand what it means and where it comes from, we participate in transforming this energy into something more positive and productive.

Anyone who is serious about peacemaking should go through a training like this.

Research In the Age of the Internet

2009-05-14T10:20:00.002-04:00

In my previous post, I talked about what library research was like before the age of the Internet. Things are different now. You can search for sources of all kinds from computers. You no longer rely on how others organize information (pre-defined subject categories, for example), since "keyword" searches are now possible, plus full-text searches. And many of the materials you use can be accessed directly from the computer: many journal articles, for example. Interlibrary loan requests can be made directly from the computer, too. More and more, historical sources are being scanned and made more widely available through web-based digital collections, as well.

I have to confess that I do appreciate how interlinked computers have made some dimensions of research easier. But I still do use books in my library too. I appreciate the opportunity to get up and stroll among the stacks. I like scanning the books on the shelf and finding related books that I might not have otherwise learned about. I like reading journal articles from bound volumes, and then skimming the rest of the bound volume to see what other articles that journal published. While I'm there, I scan recent issues of other journals I like as well.

I don't use notecards anymore, and I feel some nostalgic regret about this. Instead I use "OneNote," a Microsoft product that lets you organize information very flexibly. I do really enjoy this system as well. It's the electronic equivalent to notecards -- or, at least, I use it like that. Well, kind of. I don't separate out topics on separate cards (or "pages") since searching helps me to compile information on a single topic from many sources. But I do set up separate pages for notes from each source. And at the top of each, I write out the full bibliographic information and "tag" it with "biblio" so that I can collect all of my bibliographical information on one page.

(Recently I discovered Zotero. This is a web-based bibliographical database. While I am searching for sources, I can instantly copy the bibliographical information into Zotero and organize it in multiple ways. I can then collect the relevant sources and produce bibliographies from them when it comes time to produce my bibliography. Now I'm trying to figure out how better to integrate this with my use of OneNote.)

What amazes me the most about OneNote is the ability to capture pieces of electronic sources and copy them directly into your "notebook." You can also cross-reference your own notes using hyperlinks. So I can, for example, copy the digital image of a facsimile page of a historical source, paste it onto a page of my OneNote notebook (and OneNote automatically adds a "citation" to the original source), and then mark that image or type notes along the side. None of this damages the original. And, these digital images themselves become searchable!

So computers and the Internet not only provide access to a lot of sources much more easily, but also offer new possibilities for keeping information organized.

But there are new challenges as well. There is so much information out there, that it can be difficult to find exactly what you wish to find. And there is so much storage space on our own computers that it can be hard to keep our information well-organized, because we think it will be easy to find anything and so we might not always organize it as well as we should. In practice, I am surprised at how hard it can be to find a particular document I know I have through searching. If I have my documents well-organized, it's much easier to find it by navigating through my electronic filing system than by searching.

And I miss the special pleasure of reading through notecards by hand, and arranging them on my desk or even on the floor. Sometimes when I get stuck, I do print things out, cut them apart with scissors, and return to the process of using physical space to re-arrange my thoughts.

But, all in all, I am really glad to have lived in a timespan when I could experience this change in how library research is done. I have been able to experience the advantages of each new development while retaining the wisdom of older ways.

Research Before the Age of the Internet

2009-05-13T11:47:00.007-04:00

Research has really changed since I first learned research skills in middle school. I still remember being impressed at the systematic orderliness of the notecard technique. One color of cards was for our sources. They were each given a unique code. White cards were for taking notes on sources, and were cross-referenced to the relevant sources. Each card (or set of cards) was supposed to contain notes on only one topic from one source. You could then arrange the cards, grouping together those on a shared topic but from different sources. You would lay out your paper visually by arranging the note cards on your desk. Then you would write out your text by hand, integrating your research into a (hopefully) coherent narrative. In the end, you would type it all up on a manual typewriter. The end result was very satisfying.

The research phase itself involved finding sources, which meant going to the library, leafing through the card catalog (not always easy, especially when the cards were too tightly placed), and writing down call numbers on scraps of papers. You could look up sources by author, title, or subject. Subject-headings were pre-defined. There were huge volumes you could browse through that described the Library of Congress subject headings. Serious research required examining these to be sure you were not overlooking important possibilities in your research.

For journal articles, we would go to the bound periodical indexes. I remember marveling at the thought that somewhere there was a team of people reading through all periodicals and extracting information and putting it in alphabetical order and publishing these periodical indexes. They probably used notecards.

We'd go to the library shelves and pull the books or journals off the shelves to read them and take notes. Cutting-edge technology was "microfilm." But we quaked in dread when we saw that that was the only way to find a given source. While there were several machines for reading microfilm, it seemed that there was only ever one that actually worked. Yet its ways were mysterious. We always needed to ask for help to get it to work. The print was often hard to read, and the mechanics of reading and taking notes was often awkward -- the huge machines took up a lot of space, which left little room for easy note-taking.

Sometimes the library did not have a given source. But there was Interlibrary Loan. Using it involved going to the front desk to get complicated request forms that we had to fill out in detail by hand. Then we had to wait a long time for the source to arrive. And then we would only have it for a few days, unless it was a photocopied journal article. We would get to keep those, and that was nice, because the bound periodicals are bound so tightly that they are often hard to read. For that matter, the copies from Interlibrary Loan were often copied badly -- the middle section black because the tight binding of the journal made it too hard to flatten enough to photocopy clearly. Or a page would be missing. Or one inch of the text would be cut off.

And our teachers back then had no tolerance for delays, or for typographical errors, or bad grammar. Their response was always the same: "You should have given yourself more time, to ensure that you could take care of all of this by the deadline." And we knew they were right about this. It didn't occur to us to complain about how hard and complicated all of this was. That was simply a given. The task was to meet those challenges.

Now everything is different. (Stay tuned for the next installment: "Research In the Age of the Internet.")

End of Semester Updates

2009-05-12T13:51:00.004-04:00

I got my grades in (a little early this time!) and now am feeling the usual post-grading anxiety. Will some students be disappointed in their grades? Will they complain? Will administrators think my grades are too high?

Just as it is impossible to drive the "right" speed (because there is no speed that is fast enough for the traffic that doesn't exceed the legal speed limit), so too is it impossible to have the "right" grade distribution ("too high" according to administrators is still "too low" for the students and their parents).

I must just sigh and resign myself to disappointment on all sides.

But I am relieved that I actually did make it all the way through the semester! I had feared that the level of busyness was approaching burnout level again, but the busyness fell just short of that danger.

And I received unexpected good news that I may not have to continue as department chair next year after all! It is amazing to me how things can be unrelenting for a long time, and then suddenly and inexplicably reverse.

But the community contra dance band I was in no longer exists. We were doing fine for a few months. But our over-committed leader decided this was too much for her. I think she hoped one of us would take over. That may yet happen. I'm a little disappointed, but mostly relieved. I would prefer to participate in a seisiún (if only someone would start a regular one in our area), or be part of a serious and committed group of musicians who play at my level and enjoy switching back and forth between early music and Celtic traditional music.

Meanwhile, I'm really glad to have arrived at the start of summer break! I now have a carrel to myself in the library, and look forward to working full-time on my research and writing!

Ministry on Failure

2009-04-26T21:28:00.002-04:00

A Friend last week in Meeting said this: "The only real failure is if you don't pick yourself up and try again."

It's simple. It may even (to some) seem obvious. But it struck me very powerfully when she said it.

We have choices. We can let the world easily defeat us, or we can choose not to let the world easily defeat us. Lack of success at one time is only a real failure if we choose to let that one moment of not succeeding be the last moment we ever try.

Affirmation

2009-04-16T20:28:00.004-04:00

We need affirmation every now and then -- it keeps us motivated and able to keep moving forward against the currents of weariness and resistance we sometimes encounter, especially in a highly busy life.

Faithful readers will have picked up on the fact that my own life is a bit out of alignment. I do get encouragement, but most often that encouragement pushes me into directions I do not really want to go, while I've met considerable resistance in moving forward in the directions I do want to go. More specifically, I got pushed onto an administrative track too early in my career, before I knew better -- I thought I had no choice at the time, and maybe I was right about that. But, tragically, it turned out I was pretty good at the administrative work, even though I found it hard on me emotionally. People have appreciated the combination of my vision, sensitivity, compassion, efficiency, and high standards. They didn't want to let me off that track. But I have done a good job of resisting new opportunities that would lock me in even more. Two administrative positions and three associate dean positions opened up; I refused to apply for any of them. I did, however, continue as department chair, but only because I have been the only tenured member of my department who has remained teaching in my department on a regular basis. The year after next, the two other tenured members of my department will finally return. I will then let go of being department chair, with great relief!

Meanwhile, I have really wanted to devote more time to my academic research and writing, but it has been hard to develop and sustain this in the complexity of full-time teaching, running a department, and starting a new program at my university (Peace Studies). I have managed to keep my research and writing going, but not as much as I would like. I do get positive and helpful feedback when I present my work at conferences. But I've had difficulty getting my work published. This is in part due to the fact that I don't send out my work enough. But when I do, strange and inexplicable things happen, like promised reviewers' notes never arriving.

Trying to build some hope into my future, I had the brilliant idea one day of taking a leave of absence from my university the year after next (when the other tenured members of my department return, to ensure that one of them really does take over being chair!) to devote myself full-time to my book project. The only problem is that I would need funding. So I looked for possible grants. I applied for one. Used to failure now, I was not surprised to be rejected. But I was, of course, disappointed.

Today we had a grants consultant come to campus to work with faculty interested in finding grants. I sent her my failed grant proposal for critique, and expected today's sessions (one group session; one individual consultation) to be humbling, but hopefully illuminating, experiences.

As the group session started, I found myself thinking, "I am doomed," as she passed around sample reviewers' comments and made connections between these comments and what she saw in the proposals we had sent her. I braced myself for public humiliation. I was sure that she would single out my own proposal as exemplifying "totally unintelligible," "failing to demonstrate wider significance," "devoid of intellectual content," or "only of interest to one person--herself." I tried to calm my rising heart rate by reminding myself I was here to learn, and it's good to face reality, and such.

Then a crucial moment came. "You're the one who wrote the proposal about rationalism and empiricism?" she asked me.

"Er, yes," I replied.

"Oh! I spent a lot of time reading that on the flight!" she said.

("Uh oh," I thought to myself.)

"That one is ready to go!" she said!

("Where? The dustbin?!!" I thought to myself in rising panic.)

"Send it! May 1! I know that deadline is fast approaching, but it's nearly ready! That's a very interesting project, and you are a very good writer!"

I could not believe it.

Someone was actually, finally, valuing my work? Appreciating my project?

And . . . complimenting me in front of my peers?

I almost cried.

My colleagues wanted to know more. They were amazed and impressed. I'm very visible on my campus because of my administrative work, but people haven't really seen how much my research and writing means to me. Now this group was seeing a whole new side of me, and it meant a lot to me.

It's not that I seek fame: that scares me. But I realize that I do need some affirmation and support for work that I really feel led to do. Getting support for what I'd rather not do, and indifference or discouragement for the work I really want to do, has been really hard on me.

Today I caught a glimpse of a new possibility -- what life might be like if people supported me in what I really feel led to do.

You can get used to chronic discouragement and disappointment, and develop strategies for pushing forward anyway when you believe deep in your heart that your project is important. It is good to learn, experientially, that this is possible. But that is not a happy life. It's a life that gradually becomes a growing struggle against a kind of depression. It takes tremendous spiritual discipline to resist the temptations to bitterness and despair.

A moment of real affirmation like I received today shoots into life like a brilliant ray of sunlight. The growing fog of chronic disappointment evaporates at once; the warmth and clarity of the sunlight asserts its superior reality. "Believe in your vision of what is possible!" is what I heard it tell me today.

Happy Easter!

2009-04-12T10:45:00.003-04:00

Easter is my Quaker birthday, because my membership in the Religious Society of Friends became official on Easter, 25 years ago now!

For Easter reflections, I think I will simply refer my readers back to my posting of two years ago.

The Balanced Life

2009-04-08T22:08:00.005-04:00

I went to a retreat recently on finding balance in life. The timing was very good. I was feeling off-balance in my own life again! My expectations for the retreat were simultaneously ridiculously high ("maybe this at last will fix my life!") and realistically modest ("I probably won't learn anything new, but I am looking forward to the opportunity to be reminded of certain wise things I already know").

Well, it turned out that the retreat helped crystallize for me something I had, in the past, been on the brink of figuring out. The retreat leader started off by explaining that this was not a seminar in time-management. She wasn't going to teach us how to be more efficient so that we could cram even more into our already overburdened lives. A life in balance is something different from super-efficiency. It's a shift in perspective that allows us to focus better on what really matters to us, and to experience our lives in a more relaxed way, more aware of the beauty that is around us at every moment.

I have, in the past, been on the verge of grasping this, because I have had times of my life that approach this: times when I move from one thing to the next in my busy schedule happily focused on each thing in turn, delighted for what each task or meeting or class gives me. These, I now know, have been moments of attainment of balance.

The contrast is easy to recognize: within any given moment, you have trouble fully focusing, because you are worried about something coming up (a meeting later that day; a class you don't yet feel ready for; whether so-and-so will be upset with you for not sending that thing in yet -- and where did you put his address, anyway?) So your experience from moment to moment is fragmented, distracted, stressed. You race breathless from one thing to the next, feeling always a step behind. You are just trying to get through. Your only sense of satisfaction is that of crossing things off your list: "got that done' survived that; what a relief that's over now!" Even falling into bed at the end of the day is fraught: you feel guilty for all that you didn't quite finish; you feel compelled to set your alarm for a half-hour earlier (that's the only reason you let yourself go to bed now!), even though you are genuinely exhausted. But in the morning, you push "snooze" enough times that it finally gives up on you and you end up sleeping a half-hour beyond your normal waking time, and so your next day gets off to a frantic start all over again. There's a picture of the unbalanced life!

When our lives are unbalanced, it's easy to think that if we could just put in that extra effort to finally get reasonably caught up (or learn some time-management trick that would help us shortcut to this!), then we could feel a sense of balance again! Yet, try as we might, we never do get caught up.

So, I was struck when the retreat-leader pointed out with wry humor that she didn't want to help us find ways to pack even more into our already over-burdened lives. She had a point! I mean, really now, do you think you could ever actually get all caught up?

Suddenly I realized: I've never been all caught up! But, that's not been the end of the world! Despite that, I've had a pretty good life and I've gotten a lot accomplished that others really appreciate! So, what am I so worried about?

I don't wait until I've caught up on everything before I allow myself to eat, sleep, shower, etc. There are certain basic things that we keep doing more or less on schedule because we have to, to stay alive and functional. Why should the emotional and spiritual dimensions of self-care not be like this in our lives as well?

Stress is about attitude. Balance is about attitude.

Why not choose to live fully into every moment -- accepting it? "This is my life."

"Here I am at this meeting. The people I am with are treasures. It is an honor to be among them. The work we are doing together here has the potential to improve the world in important ways. How wonderful to be part of this!"

"Here I am in this classroom. These students are at a sparkling stage of life: on fire with new ideas; creatively exploring who they are and what they know. Maybe this class session will be one that they will talk about with their children years later. The material we are studying is powerful and important. How wonderful that we have all carved out this period of time to discuss these amazing ideas together!"

Living into every moment like this really is possible! It mostly requires remembering.

But there is more to it than that. It helps a lot if you do have your life set up in a way that you can and do trust it. Is your job a good fit? Is it helping you to live out what you feel your life is all about, at least to some extent? Have you made time in your life to regularly attend to what is most important to you? Do you like the people around you -- and feel liked and appreciated by them? If the basic elements of life, like these, are arranged well to support who you are and what you want your life to be like, then you can generally trust that the daily activities you find you must do are activities that help you to live out the life you want to live -- if you remember to notice that! Then it is possible to live into each moment with less stress and anxiety and more openness and joy.

But if major components of your life are all wrong for you, then it will be hard to find balance until you do some rearranging. So the quest for balance may require a deeper re-evaluation of your life. Finding balance does require figuring out what throws us off balance, and seeing what we need to do to address that.

It's all too easy to think that it's just "busyness" that is the fundamental problem, and being more efficient is somehow the solution. This is just a prevailing myth we've all been trained to internalize. It leaves us feeling bad about ourselves, thinking that we just don't seem to quite have what it takes to become that impressive "efficient" person who manages to hold it all together. The world wants us to be good, efficient workers, and plays on our insecurity in order to shame us into submission.

But we can reject that destructive thought-pattern. We can instead dare to find the beauty in each moment before us, and treasure the life we find ourselves in. Finding balance is not only possible -- it's also radical!

Business Ethics

2009-03-18T21:05:00.004-04:00

Not only is business ethics in the news (the outrage over executives of bailed out companies getting huge bonuses), it's a live topic in my own everyday life.

I was looking at the charges on my phone bill yesterday, and noticed that a new charge started appearing a few months ago, called a "shortfall" charge to the long-distance portion of my bill. Incredulous, I wondered if it really meant what I thought it must mean: were they actually charging me extra for not making enough long-distance calls? I called the phone company to ask. Sure enough, that is exactly what it meant! What used to be one of the least expensive long-distance plans by my carrier had quietly morphed into a bizarre and expensive plan. No longer am I merely paying a monthly charge whether I use my minutes or not (which I grumbled about back in the good ol' days) -- I now pay extra above and beyond that for each minute I fall under the 30 minutes! In other words, the cheapest my bill can be is if I make exactly 30 minutes of long-distance calls per month. But if I use fewer minutes, I get charged for each minute under 30! (And if I go over 30, of course, I get charged for that too!)

It's insane. I tried, on the phone, to switch to a different plan (one that still has a monthly charge, and now limits me to 12 minutes a month, but at least the monthly charge is cheaper and there is no "shortfall penalty"), but I couldn't believe that this is really the cheapest plan they have. But working with the customer service representative on the phone was really frustrating. She was polite enough, but put me on hold for really long periods of time in-between questions. I was suspicious that this was a deliberate strategy to discourage me from switching to the less-expensive plan. My battery on my cordless phone gave out and I had to run across the house to another corded phone in order not to lose the connection. I stubbornly held in there, because I was getting upset and didn't want to fall for this. I remained as polite to the customer service representative as she was to me, but still did voice my outrage at a plan that charges you extra for not making enough long-distance calls.

Then I decided to go online to see if I could more easily find an even cheaper plan. I did. At least I think so. When I tried to follow the online instructions for changing my plan, at first it pretended that my number was not a valid number. When I cleared my cache and then even started all over again in a new browser, it finally recognized my number, but when it detected what I was up to, it got me stuck in a loop that wouldn't let me proceed.

Maybe these are all just honest mistakes -- a change in my plan that they forgot to inform me about; being put on hold for long periods of time; the website not allowing me to make further changes. And maybe there are good reasons for charging me extra for not making enough calls. Maybe there is some way that my not making enough calls is expensive to them -- maybe the logic of this is just escaping me at the moment.

But, in relation to all else that is going on, I'm really starting to wonder whether business ethics has gone completely out the window.

I sure hope that other companies don't start following suit. Can you imagine if we have to start paying shortfall fees for, e.g., not using enough gasoline, heating fuel, electricity, etc.?

Has it become a civic duty to "stimulate the economy" by paying extra when we aren't consuming enough?

Time for More Updates

2009-03-07T15:13:00.001-05:00

Hello faithful readers! Time flies, and I realize I haven't posted in a while. Turns out that this semester is very busy for me -- approaching again the level of busyness two years ago that then led to my burnout. I must be careful. But my spirits have been pretty good, and I'm managing the load pretty well overall.

One of the reasons I am so busy again is that I took on a bit of a teaching overload this semester, but I only let myself do so because it buys me an extra course release next year. So, next year (my LAST year of being chair of my department), I'll have a 2-2 teaching load, which means two courses per semester. The normal load for those who are not chairs at my college is 3-3, but each of our courses is "heavier" than normal 3-credit courses, because we meet a full three hours per week, instead of three 50-minute sessions as at most colleges and universities. My normal load as chair is 3-2. That means I have one too-busy semester, and one manageable semester per year. To have a 2-2 load will give me a manageable load for the entire year! Nice!

This semester, I have three classes, three independent study students, am chairing my department, and coordinating our new Peace Studies minor. I also co-chair a university committee, and through that committee am bringing a guest speaker to campus. And I am playing in a new community contra dance band. We had our debut performance (guest-playing two dances) at a contra dance a couple of weeks ago. I am also running a faculty/staff reading group. And for some reason, I have recently had a lot of students requesting letters of recommendation.

A new class I am teaching this semester is Symbolic Logic (an advanced and optional course). I have a great group of students. I am finding this a lot of fun. The simple clear truth of the subject material is a welcome contrast to most of the teaching I do. I know that my postmodern friends are gasping in horror to hear me say that (the "t" word, "truth"!), but I actually do think that the basic principles of logic are true. How far this kind of truth can go is, of course, another question. But logic itself points out its own limitations -- and I find that fascinating too! I would be the first to admit that logic alone cannot solve our most important problems, but we do need its help. Anything that violates good logic really is flawed. But just according with logic is not enough: we need more.

I have also gotten distracted lately with technology. I had another scare with my electronic organizer (PDA), and managed to fix the problem with drastic action. Once I realized that the problem happened two days after the 90-day warranty expired (the device would not turn on!), instead of sending it in for a $145 repair, I took drastic action, following advice I found on the web, and took the thing apart to unplug and plug back in the battery. That worked! It was a bit tricky to do, but at a crucial moment of hesitation, I was cheered on by my tea-bag tag saying, "Fortune smiles on those who are brave."

But I also looked into alternative ways to keep my life organized so that I'm not so vulnerable the next time my PDA blinks out on me. I like having a PDA, because it's a way to carry a lot of information around in a very small device. Since I spend a lot of time in meetings, it's handy to have my calendar and crucial notes with me in a compact format. But I'm going to be a lot more careful to keep things well backed-up in a way that is easy for me to access both from home and from work.

Meanwhile, my trendy friends tell me that PDAs are now passe, and smartphones are the future. They point out that I've been having so many problems because no one is really supporting PDAs any longer. Companies have not been motivated to improve them or even ensure their reliability. They would like us to get fed up and shift over to something more expensive. And my Luddite friends tell me pen and paper are good enough -- why even bother with fickle, ever-changing and expensive technology?

Meanwhile, I've also been worrying about the state of the world, especially global climate change and the financial crisis. Given the magnitude of these problems and the dramatic effects of these problems on many people, my own problems (most of them, anyway), seem trivial in comparison.

Yet my recent preoccupation with keeping my life well-organized is a response to how busy I've been, and how much I would like to handle everything well. Meanwhile, I've been amazed to learn that my efforts have not gone unnoticed. Our new Peace Studies program has been getting some really good attention, in a variety of ways. People are noticing that what we are doing is really important. Former and current students keep telling me how much my courses have meant to them. This means a lot to me.

A person gets used to never quite being sure how one's efforts are playing out into the world. You keep trying because you believe in what you do. You stop worrying about the fact that you are never really sure of your effect on others -- you do your best to respond well to what feedback you do receive, but the rest is a matter of faith.

I had accepted this and honestly never expected it to change. "This just is how it is, and I'm fine with it," I realized.

So, to start to get significant positive response is requiring a new adjustment. It's good, and I'm grateful, but it also heightens my already-overdeveloped sense of responsibility!

But, strangely enough, I am okay with this too. A slightly earlier version of me would have found the increased sense of pressure stressful, but this actual present version of me is taking it in stride, for the most part.

I think my musical performance experience is helping me, in this. That experience has taught me how to transition from my perfectionism in practice to a performance setting in which people are actually listening to me and expecting me not to make (too many) mistakes. It's a jarring and dramatic difference, because no amount of personal, private practicing can ever prepare you for the profound psychological and physiological effects of nervousness! That's a new experience you have to integrate into your love of the music and your desire to be faithful to it in your playing. It calls forth tremendous powers of concentration to keep yourself centered and focused. Over time, if you keep trying, you figure out how to do this.

Having learned to deal with this transition musically, finding a similar transition arise for me in my teaching life is not so traumatic. It takes me by surprise, but it's not an unfamiliar problem. I can transfer what I have learned, and step up to this new level of responsibility I feel developing in my life.

And I remember especially to keep aware of God-with-me.

Why We Are Glad to Have Witnessed a Miracle

2009-01-21T09:14:00.004-05:00

New York Governor David Paterson called the recent plane crash into the Hudson River a "miracle on the Hudson," because pilot Chelsey B. Sullenberger III got the plane down skillfully enough to minimize injuries, and all 155 people aboard were rescued.

I think that this spectacular event has captured our attention not just because a lot of Americans are uneasy about flying, but also because the fact that this happened so close to the inauguration of our new President makes the story strike us with powerful symbolic force. The amazing outcome of the plane crash gives us hope that, under skilled leadership, plus the coming together of the people, we might similarly experience a dramatic rescue and recovery of our own country.

After the loss of "engine power" produced by the "double strike" of a crisis of confidence in our recent political leadership on the one side, and the loss of confidence in our economy on the other side, we feel our plane starting to go down. Our new leader calmly but clearly utters the chilling words, "brace for impact." We listen for advice: "head down, feet flat on the floor." For "feet flat on the floor," we each assess our financial well-being and bolster it as best as we can. "Head down" reminds us to take stock of who we are, as individuals, and as a nation, and we position ourselves to do our best to protect and preserve what we find most essential in defining who we are.

We hope that our new leader is as skilled as his confidence and vision lead us to believe. With expert judgment and impeccable control, can he bring this plane down gently into the hard and cold waters of the stark realities we face? Will the plane (our country) hold together under such stress? If so, will it continue to hold together well enough to protect us from drowning or freezing to death?

And, perhaps most importantly, will we as a people hold together well enough to help each other out onto the wings and into the rescue boats that will arrive to help us to transition out of crisis and into a renewed vision of what our life together can be?

We might not consciously be thinking of all of this as we revisit images of the airplane in the water and the people standing patiently on the wings, or as we read and re-read the stories of the pilots' amazing skill, the boat captains' quick response, and the peoples' wonderful cooperative spirit. But we are glad to see such a miracle, such testimony to all dimensions of the best that humans can be, as individuals and collectively.

We know that we are going to need more such vision, skill, and cooperation in the challenges that continue to face us all.

Happy MLK Day!

2009-01-19T22:13:00.003-05:00

Happy MLK Day!

Our semester started today, and so I've been preoccupied with that, but I did take time out this afternoon to attend an MLK Service, which was very moving.

And on Friday I attended a Mediation and Negotiation Workshop. I'm very familiar with mediation and negotiation, but it is always good to have a refresher, and it is always valuable to see how others teach about this. And I always learn something new. But what I learned this time surprised me: I learned just how new and unfamiliar this is to most people.

For example, after a wonderful session on dialogue, we had an exercise intended to apply what we had learned. First we had individual time to think about how we would respond in a fictional scenario, and so I dutifully applied all that we had just learned about how to engage in dialogue with the difficult person described in the scenario. Then we had to discuss this at our tables. Here's where I was surprised. All of these nice, thoughtful, bright people at my table took the situation very seriously but their response was not at all to apply the principles of good dialogue to the situation! Instead, they all judged the person difficult and unreasonable and described the ways that they would put pressure (mostly by using threats!) on the person to change his behavior to match how they thought he should behave!

In my own tactful dialogic way, I questioned them without quite pointing out that they were totally ignoring all that we had just heard described for the past 20 minutes, and I wondered out loud whether things might be more successful if one were to engage this hypothetical difficult person in a conversation about why he was doing what he was doing. "He might have a perspective we haven't considered," I suggested. "Maybe we'd be persuaded that his behavior is not as much of a problem as we had thought -- or maybe he himself would come to reconsider what he is doing and propose making changes." After all, one of our charges was to find a way to address the situation that would not make this hypothetical person become defensive. But the people at my table just looked at me as if I were from another planet.

Now the different tables were to share their insights with each other in a full-group discussion. I hoped that I might now receive some backup from the other tables. But I didn't. Instead there was almost a competition among the different tables about who could be "toughest" on that hypothetical difficult person, and which version of toughness was most likely to be successful.

The facilitators did their best to question such strategies in hopes that the participants themselves would come to realize what they were doing, but I don't think they ever did. I tried to chime in as well, but everyone kept just ignoring me.

It was a very strange experience. I realized anew how much our mainstream culture reinforces the view that when people do things we think are problematic, we must employ threat-based techniques of behavior modification to get them to change. "Nice" people instead substitute reward-based techniques of behavior modification. The automatic assumption in both approaches is "if I don't like what someone does, I'm right, they are wrong, and they won't change unless I can somehow force or manipulate them into changing."

The message that we should double-check our own motivations and our own perceptions, because we might be wrong, does not get through easily to people. The message that it's not up to us to change the people around us, but that we should instead solicit their help in reworking problematic situations and relationships that we share with them, does not get through. We have internalized bad habits of blame and punishment.

I think about all of this on MLK Day. Martin Luther King, Jr., got it. He really understood the power of nonviolence. And so did a lot of people who were involved in the civil rights movement, because they learned through experience how effective it is. And so I remind myself that it really is experience that is the best teacher. Imagined scenarios cannot quite get people to have the experience of how powerful nonviolent action is. Role-playing is better, but it is actual experiences of effective nonviolent action that is the best teacher.

And we don't need to look far to find such opportunities, actually. We can find them in daily life if we are perceptive enough. People every day blame others and try coercively to manipulate their behavior -- or even behave this way towards themselves. Living from genuine respect towards everyone (including oneself) is really challenging -- and really important. This is what changes the world.

Morning Readings

2009-01-05T20:17:00.005-05:00

I recently heard a radio interview (on Humankind) with David Allen, author of Getting Things Done. There was a lot that was interesting about the interview, but one piece that struck me was that he talked about writing things that he especially wanted to remember about life on 3x5 cards, and reviewing them every morning. Once a given concept was well internalized, he would retire that card. But the simple act of reading them every morning would bring an intention or a way of thinking into his consciousness, and over time, this had an effect.

I thought it might be interesting to give this a try. I modified the plan a little: instead of using 3x5 cards, I use one of those tiny loose leaf notebooks. One day, I sat down, and thought about important things I have learned that I want to remember better in my daily life, and wrote them down, one per page. Some are thoughts. Others are intentions. Yet others are queries.

Some mornings, as I read them, I think of new ones I want to add. I include the date when I write a new one. As I retire pages, I will also include dates of retirement, and will make a section at the back of the little notebook for these retired ones. It might be interesting to revisit those once in a while. So far, I haven't retired any of them.

Here is what some of them say:

Current page 1: "What would be a Good Day today?"

Current page 2: "My Athletic Self: I always feel better about myself after going for a run."

Current page 4: "It is important to take care of myself. If I don't, then I am probably at some level hoping or expecting others to take care of me -- and then feeling disappointed that they are not reading my mind and responding! Far better that I become aware of and clear about my needs, and ask for help when I need it."

A later page: "What does it mean to be a good friend?"

I call this my Mini-Book of Intentionality and Affirmative Living. I am hoping that it will keep me centered and focused in the new year.

The Grading is Done!

2009-01-02T18:04:00.003-05:00

Ok, so much for my noble plan to finish grading before Christmas. It's nice that my university doesn't press us to finish the grading by the Monday after Finals Week, like so many other universities do. It means we can pause to get ready for Christmas. I'm glad about that. But I've had several deadlines all at once, and getting everything done, including an unusually heavy load of grading, has been hard and I'm feeling wiped out now.

But, fortunately, I can at last take a bit of a break. I really need it.

Happy New Year!

Another Semester Has Flown By

2008-12-22T12:17:00.002-05:00

Another semester has come to a close, though I still have lots of grading to do, so it doesn't feel concluded quite yet. My college does not push us to finish the fall grading before Christmas, which is both good and bad. What is good about this is that those of us who celebrate Christmas can pause to get ready for Christmas. What's bad is that if we do that, then after Christmas we still have to finish the grading! I paused over the weekend, but I'm going to see if, in the next few days, I can finish the grading before Christmas, for a change!

Then I look forward to adding some new posts here to my blog. I have had some new insights I would like to share.

Until then, I wish my readers Happy Holidays!

Busyness and Discipline

2008-11-30T09:06:00.000-05:00

My work life is happy, these days. Even though I am still chair of my department (for this year and next year), and am also now the director of our new Peace Studies program, I am fine with all of this. Of course all of this makes my life very busy. Fortunately, however, I have not been busy in a stressed-out sort of way. It's nice to know that this is possible: that one can be busy in a happy sort of way.

Part of what has really helped this semester is the more rigorous discipline by which I have structured my life.

But, having said that, I have to confess that this has been unraveling lately. My running, for example, was interrupted by my coming down with a bad cold. Then, just as I recovered from that, Thanksgiving break came. You would think that break is a good time to pick up on running again, especially since, during break, I have the luxury of waiting until daylight breaks to run, which is far more pleasant during this cold time of year. But I still felt too daunted. Finally I decided to just give myself a break over break, and I plan to resume on Monday, when classes resume.

But, over break, I have returned to regular music practice on several of my instruments. This was something else that paused while I had a bad cold. Playing wind instruments is actually good to keep doing through a cold, but it's frustrating and difficult too, and so I'm afraid I let that drop too. Work had then also gotten especially busy. But I'm glad to be back into regular practice again now.

Anyway, discipline is key to managing a complex life. When you structure your life with practices that keep you healthy, spiritually centered, and in touch with a sense of the meaning of your life, everything else finds its proper place. You are not daunted by your busy life because (a) you are healthy enough to keep up with it without undue fatigue or risk of burnout, and (b) you are clear-sighted enough to remember how each task you must do fits into the overall meaning of your life.

The Uselessness of Violence

2008-11-29T12:51:00.003-05:00

The more I study war and peace, the more convinced I become of the uselessness of violence. I am increasingly bewildered about why people tend to be so impressed with war and violence. It is a blunt instrument, really, that tends to destroy a lot more than it intends to destroy. Its use often backfires, in that it often provokes a retaliatory response and so creates a cycle that tends to perpetuate itself (the cycle of violence). Those closely affected by the violence tend to fixate on the horror of the violence itself, and seldom listen to or care about the reasons for the violence.

The recent events in Mumbai demonstrate these points. The attacks were horrifying and difficult to understand. Who did this, and why? We do not know. Nor is anyone inclined to be that sympathetic. Sure those who instigated this got a lot of attention, but most of them also got killed. A lot of other people got killed too. For what?

If violence ever has any justification at all (which I myself seriously doubt), it would be for the sake of some grander cause. But what cause was served by this? If no one knows, it is hard to see how any cause was served. If a cause is identified, those most hurt by this are the least likely to become sympathetic to that cause. The changes the instigators may have wished for in the world are not likely to come about because of this. When people are violently attacked, or are hurt by those close to them having been violently attacked, they seldom say, "Oh, I deserved this punishment! I'm sorry and will reform my ways and become Perfect (according to everybody's standards of perfection) from now on!" Instead, they are inclined to regard the attacker as evil, and themselves as good and innocent.

So, what is accomplished by violence? Nothing, really, except perhaps increased fear, anxiety, and hatred, but I wouldn't call these "accomplishments" as such.

Ambivalence About Technology

2008-11-15T19:46:00.001-05:00

I had a bit of a crisis last weekend. For several years, I've used a PDA to manage my calendar and such, and it died. No, actually, it became terminally ill and was only half functional. Part of what I like about PDAs is that you can synchronize them with your computer, and so you have a backup of your data. I had synchronized mine recently, but I had also made a lot of changes since then. So, this did threaten to be a major crisis.

The device kind of went haywire. The controls were now behaving unpredictably. But with patience, I learned its new, twisted logic, and managed to extract my calendar data for the next couple of weeks, writing everything down. Then I managed to coax it into synchronizing with my computer one more time.

Now I had to re-think how I wanted to do things. I used to use a paper system. At times, I used Daytimer, which I really liked. Through grad school, I made up my own system and printed sheets out on my computer. Did I now want to go back to a paper system? There are three problems: it is vulnerable too, to loss -- and without backups. It's tedious to keep track of regularly repeating events. And it is bulky to carry around.

I shifted to a PDA when I became department chair and my life made a quantum leap into greater complexity. I liked being able to enter in repeating events easily. And I loved how compact it was. I could easily carry it with me wherever I went! And, I could load important documents on it, such as papers I'm working on.

So, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that this is a system that works well for me.

But, can I find a more reliable system? I was miffed at how this one died on me! (And it's not the first one that has done that, alas!) But as I did some research online, I came to realize that all of the systems have problems. The ones with the best reliability reviews are really expensive systems that have bells and whistles I don't need while lacking some of the ones I do appreciate. (This is another thing I don't like about how our economy works: it's in a company's best interest to make things that don't last too long! That way, they sell more of them!)

Then I considered smartphone systems, but I often need to look at my calendar while I'm on the phone, so, while the convenience of having PDA and cell phone all together in one unit is attractive, it doesn't seem functional for my purposes. And, again, there is the problem that many of these systems have bells and whistles I don't want yet lack some features I do want. (That's another thing about our economy that irks me. The apparent "variety" is mostly an illusion. When you find a system in a configuration that really works for you, it will die and then you will find that it's obsolete now and features that you like can never be found again because, while they sold and people liked them, they didn't sell in large enough numbers to justify continuing to produce them. Just selling things is not enough. You have to be able to sell them in large numbers! Thus are we forced by the business world to lose our individuality and go with the crowd.)

With all that's out there, I was amazed at how hard it was to find exactly what I wanted. The only one that really suited my purposes was the one I had before.

So, I ordered a new one.

It arrived. I set it up. I synchronized. And, to my horror, I found most (but oddly, not all) of my calendar gone!

This was the night before the TV crew came to my class. I was already worked up about that. So what I did was took a deep breath, turned everything off, and went to bed. "I have to stay focused," I said to myself. "I can't deal with my PDA Crisis until after my big day tomorrow." Anyway, I had my little slips of paper with my schedule scribbled on to keep me going in the meantime.

So, I got up early the next morning, went for my longest run yet (can you tell I was worked up?), and set forth into my Eventful Day.

That evening, I searched online help files. I realized that the computer I was synching to had Vista, and so I shouldn't have used the installation disk that came with my new PDA, but should have downloaded a new version for Vista.

Since things were about as bad as they could get, I decided that was still worth a try. I downloaded the new version, installed it, and synchronized again. Same problem. Still trying to stay calm, I had noticed that I could run the installation again in a "repair" mode. Why not try that? So I tried that.

To my utter and complete surprise, my calendar was restored!

But there was still a problem. Pieces of it still did not show up on my computer. Since the whole point of synchronizing is to have a workable backup on your computer should you lose your PDA, or should it die, this was still unsatisfactory.

The next night, I returned to online help and was able to chat with a technical support person who helped me solve my problem. Now everything is functional again, and I am so relieved!

Technology can be really helpful, but its unreliability can be almost catastrophic sometimes. This experience had me perceive the complexity of my life in a whole new way. It wasn't so much my dependence on technology that was the problem, but my needing fancy technology to help me manage the complexity of my life. What I mean is that any system would have to be frighteningly complex to manage such a life. The real problem is how complex my life is! The vulnerability is really at that level. The temporary lack of a PDA exposed that deeper problem.

I have two exchange students in one of my classes, one from Spain, and the other from Germany. Both have come to talk with me about how different U.S. university life is from their lives back in Europe. They cannot believe how demanding the daily schedule is. They feel under constant pressure, because they have important projects and papers due almost every day. Each said to me, "I am not a machine! Meaningful learning does not happen this way!" They came to me because they thought I might understand, and I do. But it was hard to know what to say to them. That is the reality of what university life is like here. How do we change it? This is not healthy for our students or the faculty.

Yesterday a bad cold overcame me. This morning I wanted to stay in bed all day. But to let go of what I had scheduled today would create even greater problems down the road, I thought. Postponing it would make my busy week next week impossible. So, I got up and forced myself onward. I showed up at meetings, only to find them sparsely attended because nearly everyone else was sick and overwhelmed. Had I known, I would have stayed home in bed too. After my last meeting, I was going to wrap up a few urgent things in my office and take the rest of the day off. But those few things were really many and took all afternoon.

I started off saying that I was busy but didn't feel terribly stressed, and, oddly, that is still true. My mood is quite good, and that carries me through. But it can only carry me so far, and I know that. The way I pushed myself today is not healthy, and I must not let this way of being develop into a habit again, because that's how I got burned out before.

So, in the complexity of a complex life, a lot of great things can happen, but managing that complexity and living up to its demands is hard.

When I do manage it well for periods of time, I now realize that I'm fortunate in being able to. It's not virtue so much as good fortune: good health, stamina, and support that makes it possible. To some extent, we can foster these things, but they are not completely in our control.

So I have the humility now to comprehend that I live in fragile relationship to the complexity of my life. When I see others around me struggle with their own relationships to the complexity of their lives, I have a lot of sympathy.

Is the slowing economy a sign that we've all had enough? We can't go on at this relentless pace? Sometimes I wonder if that's really what this means...

Other Updates

2008-11-14T19:51:00.005-05:00

In other updates:

Yes, I am still running, and continue to make slow but steady progress.

I have been very busy this semester, but I've been handling it very well, and I think the running is part of what's making a difference. But it's not just that. It's also that putting this energy into getting the Peace Studies program has felt like an important part of my life mission, and so putting in long hours has felt satisfying rather than tiring.

I think I've found a new musical group to join. It's a new contra dance band. I went to the first, organizational rehearsal, and it is looking very promising!

I've managed to keep some momentum going on my research. I finished two smaller projects and now can turn my research attention back to my bigger and favorite project. In fact, I'm scheduled to talk about it with our philosophy faculty in a few weeks, so the timing is excellent.

Publicity for Peace

2008-11-13T20:25:00.004-05:00

It turns out that our Peace Studies program is getting some good local publicity. At first, a mention in a small local paper; and an interview and a photo of the planning committee for the school paper. Meanwhile, I was disappointed not to see mention in more prominent local papers or my beloved local public radio station! But then, to my complete surprise, we received a request from a city news TV station for an interview! I was interviewed on camera, and then the next day they came back and filmed my class and interviewed some of my students! The segment has not aired yet, so I do not know how it all turned out. But it was all pretty exciting!

In truth, I am very camera shy and would rather stay out of the spotlight, but I knew that this was a rare opportunity to share what we are doing. My students were splendid. They were very excited and rose to the challenge, participating really well in discussion for the camera! They participate well in discussion anyway, but seeing them try extra-hard for this occasion was really wonderful!

In the life of teaching, you work really hard, and are never sure what exactly is sinking in or how all of this may or may not matter in your students' lives. It is faith that keeps you going. But in a moment like this, seeing the students working really hard to show the world how much they value what this means to them -- this class, this subject, but also our college -- really moved me!

The reaction of my colleagues to all this attention has been interesting too. "What was that all about?" they asked. "I was interviewed, and then they came and filmed my class!" I replied., with a dazed and awkward smile. "For what?" they asked, bewildered. After all, I am a quiet type, mostly working hard in the background, never trying to draw attention to myself. "Peace Studies!" I replied, surprised that they wouldn't have figured this out. "Oh," they said. It's old news around here that I'm into that kind of stuff. But I, in turn, am surprised that it didn't really dawn on them that this would make news. I knew that it would make some news, and our university publicity staff was ready and waiting -- they expected it, too.

Of course there are lots of other Peace Studies programs across the country and across the world. But I'm not talking about national (or international) news -- this is a big deal in our local area, because there are several colleges around, and no one else has a program anything like this. And we are near a military base. The whole idea of "Peace Studies" really does take people by surprise here!

So I am grateful to have had a chance to explain a bit what it is and why we find it valuable to study it and teach it here.

Maybe that's it now. I'd actually like things to calm down a bit now...

Election Maps

2008-11-08T11:10:00.004-05:00

This is my favorite election map:

It is from this website: http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mejn/election/2008/

It uses red, blue, and shades of purple in between to indicate percentages of votes, at the county level. And so it provides a more nuanced view of voter choices across the country.

From this other (also fun) map, I found that in the small county I grew up in (but no longer live in), Obama lost by one vote! But Obama still won in that state. In fact, Obama won in all states where I've lived!

I know that not everyone agrees with me, but I am happy about the results of the presidential election, for a lot of reasons. It will be interesting to see how things continue to unfold from here.

Peace Studies Program

2008-10-26T19:48:00.004-04:00

I've been really busy lately, in part because I and some other faculty have been working hard on a proposal for a Peace Studies minor at the college where I teach. I finally submitted the proposal earlier this month.

And I have just received word that it was accepted!!!

This is very exciting news!

There is a lot I could say, but for now I will just say this: I think it is really important that we are doing this, because we find our students hungry for new paradigms. They are worried about this world that they find themselves in, and they see that many of the well-accepted ways of thinking are not really working. They are prematurely cynical, but underneath that cynicism, they are desperate to find reasons to hope: reasons that hold real promise; reasons they can trust.

Peace Studies helps them to perceive new possibilities, for their own lives, and for a hopeful future.

More Thoughts on the Economy

2008-10-12T10:04:00.003-04:00

As I've continued to hear and read about the current financial crisis, I've been wondering if the root of the problem is that those who are very wealthy and very greedy have finally pushed everyday workers too far.

The economy is powered by the work of the workers, coupled with people's willingness to spend money. But if workers are pushed harder and harder for less and less, they eventually collectively reach a breaking point in both dimensions of powering the economy: the energy they put into their work, and the money they have on hand to afford to buy as much.

Some of this is structural. I heard an interview with Steven Greenhouse on public radio (NPR) this morning. He has written a book (The Big Squeeze) about the increasing stress on American workers. Many American workers have had to work harder and harder for less and less. And then many get laid off as companies continue to try to increase profits, and do so by cutting payroll.

It's no wonder that all of this is a very bad idea. When there are layoffs that result in a reduction of positions in a company, those who are left have more work to do, but reach limits in how much more they can do, and so productivity begins to decrease. When those who are still employed keep having to do more and more (sometimes having to take second jobs just to make ends meet), they eat badly and may not get enough exercise, and their health suffers, but health benefits are also cut. And with layoffs, and pay that does not keep pace with the rising cost of living, people have less money to buy anything above and beyond the basic necessities.

What has fueled this squeeze? I think, but I'm not sure, that it's not that companies have been struggling to stay afloat, for the most part (although the problems may quickly evolve to that), nor that they are not making profits -- what I have heard more and more in recent years is that companies have not been making big enough profits.

So maybe this is the problem: it's become socially acceptable to make investment decisions only based on performance. The only thing that matters is whether you are investing in the companies that make the biggest profits. This has become what is regarded as rational. The only goal is to make as much money as possible. And so companies compete against each other in terms of how big their profits are.

An encouraging sign is that the phenomenon of "socially responsible investing" has emerged and has been gaining credibility. At least some investors do care about more than the bottom line. They don't make investment decisions just based on performance, but also in terms of the social value of what companies produce, as well as the way companies treat their employees and handle the environmental impact of their production methods.

I would like to see the day come when people care more about ethical measures of success of the companies they invest in than performance. It is still rational to want to support companies that are fiscally responsible, but what if people saw this only as a minimal requirement? And what if the question here were not "how much of a profit does the company make?" but simply, "does the company have a pretty consistent track record in making profits?" without caring how large? What if people just wanted to make some extra money, not "as much as possible." And what if what was determinative, after this minimal requirement is met, is the ethical track record of the company:

"Do I believe in the social value of what this company produces?"
"Does this company treat its employees well?"
"Does this company operate in ways that are environmentally sustainable?"

And only if a company passes all of those tests, does one decide to invest in it.

Some people do this already, but clearly not everyone. What if this became normal practice? Then would our economy revive and operate in a healthier way?

I think it really could. Care about the environment would help sustain the natural resources that companies need for producing what they produce. Limiting production to what is of social value would help everyone to be healthier and to live in healthier relationships with each other. And taking good care of workers keeps them productive, happy, healthy, and able to spend their extra time, money, and energy contributing to society above and beyond what they do for work: being creative, raising children, and attending to the quality of life in the communities in which they live.

I used to question a profit-driven economy altogether, thinking that we would all be better off if all companies were run on a non-profit basis: just trying to be fiscally responsible, and not trying to make "extra" money for people who are not actually doing the work. Any "extra" money that happens to be made could be channeled back into the company to pay for its growth, or could be given away to charitable causes.

But over time I've come to grudgingly accept that there are ways that investment for hopes of profit can be good. Putting money into something you believe in, in hopes of getting that money back with a little extra, is not in itself necessarily problematic. Most of our retirement plans rely on this feature of our economy. At heart, and at best, it is based on a principle of trust and optimism: that if you let others use your extra money while you do not immediately need it, they can do creative things with it that increase the quality of life for everyone, so that by the time you need that money back, they are able to give it back with a little more besides.

The problem has been that people have more and more cared only about performance. Letting greed rule is not a good idea. We should shift our attention to using our extra money to do social good. It's okay not to want to lose money in the process; even wanting a little extra is not bad. But we shouldn't be so focused on getting a lot extra that we lose sight of the bigger picture. After all, what is money for? It is not an end in itself. It is a form of energy. It is a means for channeling our energies towards what we value. We can and should use it to improve ourselves and the world around us.

Running Again, and Other Updates

2008-10-11T16:50:00.004-04:00

I am running again. Some running friends had advised me to lay off for two weeks, but I did go out this morning (one day shy of two weeks), and everything seems fine. I'm glad! It feels good to be doing this again. I've lost some of my hard-won conditioning, but not as much as I had feared.

My life has gotten very busy again. It's back up to Level III. Mostly I've not minded because I'm enjoying all that I'm doing. I think I mentioned that I've been resuming my efforts at getting a Peace Studies program going at my University. That's a big reason why I have been extra-busy. But this feels important, in a way that I find very satisfying. So I don't mind this extra outlay of energy. If this gets accepted, the actual implementation will not be so hard, and will involve work I really enjoy.

And, in light of the state of the economy, I've been wondering again what money really is. My concerns at the time of that posting was that new money seems to be made out of wishful thinking. I'm thinking that I may have been right. Maybe this would be a good time for a "jubilee." Take whatever money is left, divide it by the number of people, and distribute it evenly, and see what happens. Would that be a good way to press the "reset" button on the economy?

Ouch!

2008-10-01T21:42:00.004-04:00

I strained or sprained my ankle. I missed a step coming down a staircase in the dark and toppled over. My first thought (as I struggled back up on my good leg, gingerly then putting my injured leg down to see if it could bear any weight) was, "Oh no! Is this going to throw off my running schedule?" The pain was unbearable for a few moments, but then I could walk, sort of, in a hobbly sort of way.

My ankle swelled up. I awoke several times that night in pain. The next morning (Monday), I was determined to go for a run -- until I got out of bed and realized I could still barely walk. I looked in a medical book about how to treat strains and sprains, and reluctantly realized that I really did have to take it easy for at least a few days.

So, I've been trying mostly to stay off it. It doesn't hurt very much any more, but it is still a little swollen. Maybe I can resume my running on Friday. I'll be tentative and careful and see how it goes.

Sigh.

But other things in my life are going reasonably well. It could be worse...

Tentatively Embracing Complexity Again?

2008-09-27T14:50:00.004-04:00

I continue to be on track with my running (pun intended!). I haven't progressed beyond ten minutes in one go; but since one of my goals is not to push myself too hard, I can say that I am making great progress in my goal of not pushing myself too hard! Steady progress in running ability is not actually possible. Many training schedules include a week of holding steady or even cutting back a little every few weeks. After my initial steady improvement, I am not surprised to find myself hitting a plateau now.

I'm having a hard time finding time for research, though. My life has gotten immensely busy again. Because of lots of interest from students, former students, faculty members, and the president of my university, I decided that I could not let go of our plan to construct a Peace Studies minor where I teach. Besides, I am teaching a Peace Studies course again, and revisiting the material has been very good for me. I am also amazed all over again to witness the effect of this course on my students. This weekend is family weekend, and the parents of one of my students came by my office to say that the Peace Studies course is their daughter's favorite course, and they asked me for reading recommendations so that they could talk with her intelligently about this material.

I'm still putting in some time for research -- having some real deadlines helps keep me focused! I have a paper I have to finish this weekend. I should be working on it right now. So I will.

Busy though I have been, I am reasonably happy. My decision to resume with Peace Studies has made me happier than I expected. It had been a good plan when I thought I would be relieved of chairing my department. But when I learned that I had to continue as Chair of Philosophy for two more years, I considered letting go of the Peace Studies plan, at least temporarily. Deciding not to let it go does complicate my life. But it feels really important, and that gives me energy.

And my life as Chair of my department is in fact better this year. We have a new faculty member who has brought good energy to our department, and I am amazed at how much of a difference this has made. I've been carrying so much of the weight of our department for so long that I honestly did not know that things could be different if others had time and were willing to take some initiative in departmental projects. I've always liked my colleagues, but they've tended to either be focused on their teaching and research or highly involved in other initiatives in our university. Having someone who has taken interest in our department and wants to help it develop to its full potential is making a huge difference. Our department now gets together for lunch every week, and we have set up a schedule of sharing our research with each other once a month.

So, I'm busy, but things are looking up, and I am very glad about this.

Running Update

2008-09-21T12:02:00.001-04:00

My running is still going well. I've now kept to my schedule for four weeks, and I'm up to being able to run for 10 minutes in my first stretch of running. Then I walk a bit and run about three more times in shorter spells. The total time of this run-walk is about 20 minutes, framed by 5-10 minutes of walking to warm up and again to cool down.

I'm pleased. I did not expect to be able to do this well this soon. And I do not feel like I'm pushing myself too hard. I'll continue not to push myself too hard -- I'm kind of happy with 10 minutes and will let myself stay at this stage for a while if I need to, extending it only very gradually. Instead of pushing to extend longest run, I'm gradually extending the duration of the run-walk part.

I think there must be something to theories of "body memory." Because there were significant times in my past during which I did run regularly, my body in some sense remembers this and is able to adapt more quickly to my running again than if I were only just now in life starting for the first time. I'm still a long way from the level of fitness I once had, but, like I said, I'm surprised that I'm progressing faster than I expected.

I'm also really happy about how well the running has improved my overall energy and my spirits.

Another good sign is that I find myself at times throughout the day thinking, "I'd rather be running," and looking forward to the next time I go. My times of running are transcendent moments. I connect with nature and with a wider perspective in which my own problems become recontextualized as small, local, and manageable, losing the inflated cosmic proportions they can sometimes assume during my moments of despair. Despair itself becomes reconceptualized as merely human.

As I run, I feel like a very small dot, moving slowly in a huge landscape. I feel both tired and powerful as I propel myself across the face of the earth. Illusions fall away in such a pure physical encounter with exactly what I can and cannot do. There it is. I see what I can do, but I also experience exactly how difficult it is. It is difficult and easy, both. At every moment, I can choose how hard to push. I watch too how I make these decisions. I try simply to notice rather than judge. In this, I learn about who I am in new ways.

For example, I used to have a habit of pushing myself very hard. But after my encounter with burnout, something in me has changed. I see it reflected in my running. Keeping the running going is too important to me now to risk injury. I am not as inclined to push as hard as I used to do, and I see in this the growth of a very real self-compassion.

I saw an article in our local paper not long ago about an 82 year old woman who has been running for 30 years. There was a photo of her, and she looked great: not only fit, but happy. I thought: "I want to be like her when I'm her age!"

Keeping with it is much more important than how quickly I progress.

I will have to keep telling myself this, because it will get harder as the daylight hours get shorter and the weather gets colder. And so I remind myself too that this is an opportunity to notice the changing seasons more vividly. That is part of the journey too.

Running, Yes; Research, Well, Er...

2008-09-13T21:06:00.003-04:00

My running still goes well and is still on track!

But my research plan? Well, er, once I realized that I'd lost momentum, I decided to pour energy this week into getting caught up and even ahead in certain lingering administrative matters (mostly having to do with my ever fascinating life as department chair), vowing to myself to get back on track with the research this coming week for sure!

But it's a dangerous tactic. Since of course I didn't quite accomplish all I wanted to accomplish, it's awfully tempting to put it off one more week. But that quickly would become a slippery slope! So I will do my best to resist that temptation.

Besides, a big part of my lack of success this week at accomplishing all that I wanted to accomplish was that I wasn't working very efficiently, in large part because I was swimming in the molasses of depressive symptoms again, which in turn I think was mainly due to losing a sense of who I am and what I feel called to do in life, which itself is due mostly to the fact that I've lost momentum on my research.

So, the solution to all of my woes is to follow my research schedule strictly again next week!

I've started by working on it a bit today. And it's helping my mood significantly.

Surprisingly, despite all of this background drama in my life, the teaching is going very well. I am grateful for that. My students this semester are really splendid!

More on Running

2008-09-09T21:47:00.004-04:00

Strangely enough, one of the new features of my running program that helps make it work for me is my required days off. On the days that are not my required days off, if I'm tired and having trouble getting up, I think to myself, "Look, I have to take tomorrow off, so I really need to go today," and, surprisingly, that works!

My previous system was to go at least four times a week, but with the implication that more was better, and without specifying which days (except that I could take no more than two days off in a row, but only rarely: preferably only one).

Nice and flexible, yet clear, right?

But in the morning waking-up haze of having to make a new decision each day, it was too much for me. It became far too easy to find excuses not to go, especially as the semester wore on, time pressures intensified, and the days got shorter and colder. If two days elapsed without running, I knew that I'd have to run now a few days in a row to make my four-times-per-week goal, and so the pressure to go every day would increase. But if (when) that pressure became too much for me and I let myself slip to missing more than two days, then I realized that my next time out would be perceptibly harder. Going out would confirm this, which was discouraging, and so before I knew it, I found myself well along the path of giving up entirely.

The feature that is working surprisingly well for me this time is my specifying exactly which days I must run, and exactly which days I must not run. No new decisions to make. The decision is already made. I just comply. And if I'm grumpy about having to go out, I remind myself that I'll be glad I did, and I also remind myself that tomorrow I get to stay in, and there I go. Simple.

It's funny that this is kind of negative when I usually try to find positive motivations, but, hey, it's working for me right now, so I'll accept it!

And I also trust that the positive addiction (that I'm already seeing signs of) will grow as my fitness level increases.

The Semester is Rolling

2008-09-06T11:17:00.005-04:00

The semester is fully underway now.

I've been keeping up with my running schedule! I've now had two weeks of 4 times of going out for a 30-minute walk/run, and can run continuously for 5 minutes. I then add in other times of running as I am able to manage for the next 10-15 minutes. This walk/run is framed by 10 minutes each of walking to warm up and cool down. I am really really happy that I have been able to do this. To succeed for two weeks is a solid step along the way of instituting something as a new habit in one's life.

My classes are starting off pretty well, I think. One course I'm teaching is part of a new experimental program we might institute, and I was pleased to receive permission to teach it as a pass/fail course. This will greatly simplify my life, because I can give students feedback without being evaluative about it!

Shockingly enough, one student dropped the course, claiming that it was too demanding in her already demanding schedule! But also, interestingly enough, already I could tell on the first day that she wasn't really going to do this. What put her off? Mostly I have very good rapport with my students, but every now and then I do encounter a student who, so to speak, takes one look at me and runs as fast as possible in the opposite direction. I try not to take the personally. Since they don't really know me yet, maybe it just indicates that somehow I remind them of someone in their past that they had a bad experience with. While I know to give people the benefit of the doubt until I really do get to know them, young people especially maybe haven't learned this in life yet.

But I have to admit that the design of this course is pretty intense. It's a chance for sophomores to connect philosophy with real life. (The course is called, "The Meaning of Life.") And I think students see that I'm really serious about this, and some students are really drawn to this and find it exciting, but others are terrified -- and maybe for good reason!

At any rate, to be honest, I'm kind of pleased to be able to say to some of my dubious colleagues, "I scared one student away from my pass/fail course," because most of my colleagues think that pass/fail courses are fluff courses. Those who know me and have examined my teaching know that all of my courses are demanding, in very good ways. But those who don't know me so well still do know that I question our grading system (I'm kind of famous on campus for that), and so they are inclined to scrutinize my various experiments with grading somewhat critically. I don't mind. I think this is healthy and important. I totally agree with them that we don't want to change our system unless we are sure that doing so would genuinely improve the effectiveness of the kind of education we want to provide. And I know that I haven't myself figured out how to do this, and so I don't presume that my experiments so far are anything more than experiments. I have not developed a system I myself am fully happy with yet.

My research did stall out last week, not so much because of the busyness of the start of a new semester, but because of new extraordinary events in my life. But I think that things are calming down again, and I did find some time to work on research again yesterday.

Just when I was starting to think that I had calmed the forces that bear down on me imposing great pressure upon me, they begin to intensify again. In counseling, I continue to work on trying to understand my own role in all of this, and how to deal with it effectively.

Meanwhile, I haven't been oblivious to current events in the world around me. I just haven't been blogging about them. There's a lot I could say about politics, for example, but, well, don't get me started...

My New Schedule for My Life

2008-08-24T08:37:00.002-04:00

Long-term readers have probably detected patterns in my blogging, and one of those patterns is that a key way that I get psyched for a new academic year is to plan my schedule, treating this as an artistic task: the art of creating a Good Day.

I've read back on my previous attempts, and think I have a better sense of what works and what does not work, and so, with brand new optimism, I hereby present my latest version:

1. Running. Today I got up early and went for a run! Because of this one-day success (the first time in about a year that I've actually gone running, as such), I now perhaps ridiculously think that I can integrate this permanently into my life at long last! Now, lest my patient readers think I've turned inexplicably irrational, let me explain. First of all, there have been times of my life when I've succeeded in maintaining a morning running schedule. In fact, this worked well for me two summers ago, when I even ran in a 5K at the end of the summer, and last summer -- until it got interrupted by my (minor) surgery. I tried to pick it up again last fall, but it failed miserably. Someone told me that maybe I'm just not a morning person. But my attempts to re-locate exercise to other parts of the day ended up failing too because my schedule just gets too busy and complex during the academic year.

But I've re-evaluated what went wrong last fall. I had classes every morning at 8:30. As the daylight hours get shorter, and the weather gets colder, it got harder and harder for me to get up early enough to fit the running in, until I did give up in discouragement.

But this semester is different. I only have 8:30 classes two days a week. So my plan is simple: get up at 6:00 am every morning, and on the mornings that I don't have 8:30 classes, go for a run. The mornings I do have 8:30 classes I can skip. In fact, building in these allowed days off will be good for me, I think -- otherwise I can push myself too hard too soon and risk injury (since, after all, I keep getting older as time passes...!)

On weekends I'll try to keep to the schedule in terms of what time I get up in the morning, but I'll let myself decide whether to run, or just walk, or give both a miss, based on how I feel. I'll try to go at least once during the weekend, but that's not a hard and fast rule.

The truth is, establishing a three- to four-day-a-week pattern will be a vast improvement over what I've managed lately. It is enough to build a solid base of fitness.

I think this is crucial for me, because when I do exercise regularly, I feel better about life, and better about myself. The effect is immediate. I'm feeling it right now! And the truth is, this is a nice way to start the day! Instead of worrying immediately about work, I will know that I will have this time for myself, to do something good for myself, and to immerse myself in nature: a world bigger than me and my little concerns! It will anchor me in much-needed Perspective!

And my training program is simple: Walk 10 minutes. Run as much as I feel like in the next span of 10-15 minutes. Walk 10 minutes.

I can gradually expand the middle section, marking with celebration certain milestones like "running 5 minutes continuously without strain," "running 10 minutes continuously without strain," etc., until I can run 30 minutes continuously again, framed within 5-10 minute warm-up and cool-down periods. When I'm there, I'll let myself stay there, and perhaps even start entering 5K races again if I feel inspired to do so.

2. Another feature of my schedule is that I am building in dedicated research times again. This sort of worked for long stretches well into each semester last year, and so my optimism is well-grounded, I think. My previous attempts have not been total successes, but they have not been total failures either. And I think I've addressed some problematic patterns I've noticed from the past.

So the plan is that on the days I have class later in the day, I start off with two hours of research (Monday and Wednesday; on Friday this extends to lunchtime). On the days I have my 8:30 class, I will go to my carrel immediately after class and work for an hour. This still gives me space to plan for my later class.

The key is that I must go immediately after class, without pausing to check e-mail. In the past, I allowed a half-hour gap to get a cup of tea and check e-mail, and that was my undoing -- I got caught up into dealing with administrative matters until then I had to shift attention to class prep again.

My new plan is to not check e-mail, but deal with all of that after my afternoon class.

3. Music practice. As is my usual schedule, I do this in the late afternoon or evening -- as soon as I get home, or, if getting home presses too close to dinner, after dinner then. Then the rest of the evening after music practice is time to do more work if I need to, or (rarely) to relax if I need rest.

4. Like I mentioned before, I will let Sundays be sabbath days.

So, I am feeling really good about all of this! Empowered by what looks like a good schedule, I think I may succeed in managing my busy life well while maintaining momentum on my research!

Odds and Ends

2008-08-23T05:51:00.000-04:00

1. I went to a meeting the other day. The other faculty were in such high spirits they were bouncing off each other and ricocheting around the room. I think it is really funny how giddy and happy professors do become as a new school year starts. They keep talking as if they are rueful that the summer is coming to an end, but if you watch them work and watch how they interact with each other, you cannot help but notice that they are really happy and excited.

2. I've had a string of computer problems. Some are because we got new computers at work over the summer, and switched from XP to Vista. But others are totally unrelated. For example, my computer monitor went up in smoke all of a sudden. Now I have a new flat-screen monitor. I feel very modern and up-to-date now. The funny thing is that I had just heard that that can happen to the old CRT monitors, but I had never known it to happen to anyone. Then it suddenly happens to me! I do like that the new monitor takes up less space and uses less energy.

3. Speaking of being modern and up-to-date, I got an iPod for my birthday. I've been having fun loading a bunch of my CDs onto it. Then I make playlists that, for example, bring together different versions of Irish tunes as played by different groups. All of this has me listening to more music, more intentionally now.

4. When I received news that my natural father died, I made a new playlist of "laments" and listened to it and cried.

5. Then I finally picked up my flute again and played a bunch of laments, and didn't cry, but was sad to realize that my Irish father (well, of Irish descent) would never hear me play Irish traditional music.

6. I have been having trouble working, which at times has put me in a bit of a panic since the school year is rapidly approaching. But suddenly on Thursday I did work very well again. On Friday I was back to being moody and didn't work well. Today, though, I'm actually feeling optimistic.

7. Someone wrote to me yesterday to encourage me not to give up on trying to start a Peace Studies program here where I teach (I had been contemplating giving up because of all the other pressures in my life), and to ask me to take a leadership role in forming an Irish Session in our area. I found myself enormously grateful that someone valued me for two of the things I most value about myself (my interest in peace studies; my interest in traditional music), and also grateful that this person was also offering real help and support in both of these endeavors.

I've had lots of good ideas, but too often feel alone and unsupported as I try to carry them out. That's what led to my burnout. Last year I pulled away from a lot. But in recent weeks, I've started considering what I need to bring back into my life in order to feel meaningfully connected to people (in ways that are supportive of how I feel called). I feel I've healed enough from my burnout now that I can cautiously try to add some things back, as long as I'm careful not to overdo it again. I also have to be careful to add them back in ways that don't place undue pressure upon me.

So the fact that someone else has ideas about how to move forward in these two endeavors, and is willing to play a role, but also values my input, really means a lot to me. I feel a sense that at last the universe is trying to help me instead of dauntingly resisting my every effort!

There are other ways too that things I thought would be really challenging this coming year might in fact be resolved much more easily than I had expected, but we'll have to see.

All of this shows me how hard my life really has been in recent years. Everything has tended to be much harder than I had expected, finally wearing me down to quite serious burnout and depression.

But maybe things don't always have to be this hard. Dare I believe that some things in my life might actually start to become easier and more fulfilling? Is that really possible?

Letting Myself Be

2008-08-21T22:51:00.004-04:00

What I'd like to do is go for long walks and wander aimlessly.

But a new academic year rapidly approaches. I still need to finish getting ready. Sometimes it's good to try to work. Other times, it's hopeless. Fortunately, I still have not had to press myself.

Sometimes I sink into real depression again. Other times, moments of being really glad to be alive break through like those rays of light between storm clouds -- unbelievably bright, but passing by so fleetingly. I am glad for them, though. They remind me that there really is a brilliant sun behind the clouds. I do know this even when I am not directly seeing it.

And sometimes I actually believe that I can enter into the new academic year with a whole new attitude: keeping "in touch" and staying centered.

Lately I've started avoiding work as much as possible, but I sense that new ideas about how to handle it well are brewing under the surface. So, when it is time, then I will be ready and I will know how to take it on with grace and effectiveness.

So I hope.

Not Really Moving Forward Very Well

2008-08-19T08:42:00.000-04:00

Ok, I'm afraid I have to take that back. I'm not really moving forward very well, after all.

I thought that having a final Interlibrary Loan deadline for two important books yesterday would motivate me to finish them over the weekend. And these are fascinating and wonderful books, highly relevant for the research project that I am very much interested in and enjoying working on. Yet, I've been having a very hard time concentrating.

So Richard M's recent comment, and similar sentiments from other friends, remind me to be patient with myself. An event like this is big in a person's life.

I have felt very close to my father after receiving the news, because of course such news gets you revisiting old memories, and doing what you can to find out more about the person and his life, such as talking at length with other family members. Having a mystery associated with it all maybe intensifies the inquiry.

So, feeling so close in this sort of way, I am startled every morning when I wake up and remember that he is gone. Initially when I wake up I am happy because I feel close. Sometimes I find myself in the middle of a stream of thought and am thinking, "I can't wait to ask him about that!" But then I remember with a jolt: "Oh, wait a minute: he died! I can't ask him any of this!" And I am stunned at the finality of it. I'm really never going to see him again.

How naive of me to think after the first intense wave of emotion that that's it: I'm ready to move on. Because my father hadn't been much in my life, really, I tried to tell myself that my sadness was just a temporary intensification of a sadness I've lived with all my life, and that I'd be able to move on with my life pretty quickly then.

Each loss is its own unique story, following its own unique path of grief. And you don't really know what it is like until you are in it. Slowly it is dawning on me that I am still just barely in the early stage of grieving.

So, yes, I will try to be patient with myself.

Moving Forward Again

2008-08-15T12:02:00.004-04:00

A new school year approaches, and this is probably a good thing even though I keep thinking and saying that I'd like another two months, at least.

I would like to say that the approach of a busy schedule focuses my mind and motivates me to use the rest of my summer well, but, to be honest, in the face of recent events in my life I have not been well-focused at all. And last night I even went into a tailspin of panic about it all.

But in the light of day, I'm doing better again.

There are ways I am looking forward to the coming year, because things are on course for us to make some changes in our department that I believe will make my life easier in the long run. And in other dimensions of my work life and my personal life too, I feel much clearer about my goals and what I need, and so I feel optimistic that I will be able to continue to make changes that will bring my life more in line with what I want it to be. But the process still feels long and hard.

As I look ahead with trepidation to the coming busyness, I am considering reviving my Sabbath idea as a strategy for maintaining sanity. I am going to let Sundays be stress-free days. On these days, I will avoid anything that stresses me out, but I am allowed to do anything that I enjoy. This will be one day a week during which I will be intentional about not letting anxiety rule my life. This weekly discipline (which hopefully will infuse the rest of my life as well) will help me to keep in touch with positive motivations, and keep in touch with a sense of how God is calling me (instead of what the people in my life want from me).

Since there are in fact many dimensions of my work that I enjoy, this version of Sabbath is not for me a day of "no work," but a day to remember to try to tune into positive motivations and get centered again if the week has pushed me off center. It's a day to take stock of how things are going, and to seek refreshment.

Just setting this in place cheers me up and gives me hope.

There are some other decisions I have to make too about how to set up my weekly schedule to help me keep up with my busy schedule, and so I may be writing about this more in the coming days.

On the Death of My Distant Father

2008-08-12T16:51:00.005-04:00

I received word last week that my natural father died. I had not seen him in 30 years, and had not spoken with him in 9 years. I did my best to try to keep in contact, but it is a long-standing mystery in my life why he has not wanted to keep in touch with my brother and me.

I had always hoped for the chance to see him again, or at least talk with him again. I had always hoped to solve this mystery and come to understand. Now I am adjusting to the realization that it is very likely that I will never know.

To have a parent not take an interest in your life is hard to live with. All my life I’ve been trying to do something spectacular to justify my existence and prove my worthiness for love. “Maybe if I did something really great and wonderful and became famous, my father would finally notice me and be happy to be related to me,” was a primary motivating force throughout my life, though I did not consciously realize this for a long time. By the time I did realize it, I was able to deconstruct all of the premises supporting this belief, but, in a way, it was too late. The pattern had become too deeply ingrained in my entire being. My whole being had been indelibly shaped by a constant desire to prove myself worthy of existence and love.

When my father was diagnosed with cancer a few months ago, my cousin redoubled his efforts to get him to be in touch with us, but to no avail. My father even forbade my cousin to let us know that he was ill. Thankfully, my cousin did break the rules to let us know that he had died – if he had not, I was perilously close to finding out through the internet. I periodically did internet searches to see what my dad was up to. He was, as they say, “highly respected in his field,” and so has a pretty impressive web presence. But the online obituaries now appearing do not mention my brother and me at all among the list of survivors.

It’s hard to know how to handle a death like this, when the “official” survivors don’t want us involved, for reasons we do not understand. I revert back to the child I was when I did last know him, and with childlike simplicity absolutely cannot fathom why other people are blocking two young kids from coming into that sacred space of honoring and saying goodbye to their dead father. Never mind that we are complicated grown-up adults now – still, we are solid good people, well-respected in our own fields. No one should have any reason not to want to see who we have become.

From afar, we try to peer over a fence too high for us to see over. Through small cracks in the fence (the internet), we catch glimpses of love and laughter and appreciation that seems otherworldly to us, perpetually out of reach. Is it real? Was he real?

Did he not care, or did he care so much he couldn’t handle it?

How would all of our lives be different if only … ?

But of course such questions can drive a person crazy. It is too late now.

I’ll go on trying to prove myself worthy of love, because it is the only way I know how to live. It doesn’t matter that it’s hopeless, because I already did figure that out: human love anyway is always inadequate. Strangely, this thought has come to comfort me. It sounds bleak, but it has helped me to become more forgiving and more accepting. Over the years, I have come to see how I’ve always been surrounded by love. So what if it has seldom or never been perfect? Why should I expect it to be? Do I love in a perfect way? No! I wish I did, but I know that I fall short because of my own limitations. So I can understand why others fall short too. No one is omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent—except God. There is a perfect love that is there for us, but never will any one human being manifest it all perfectly.

So, even though there is a lot I do not understand about my father and my own distant past, I actually do believe that he loved me. Much of that love never reached me, and much of my own love for him was blocked from reaching him too. This is tragic.

But the love that was there was and is still real.

Hanging on to Summer as Long as I Can!

2008-08-07T16:32:00.003-04:00

People keep pointing out to me that the new school year is approaching. I try to ignore them.

I'm hanging on to summer as long as I possibly can. I'm trying to live fully in the present. The weather is still nice. The students are not back yet. I still do have time to keep writing, and to accomplish a few more things that I had hoped to accomplish this summer.

I am happy with how the summer has gone so far. I'm glad that I got a good research schedule going right away. I've gotten a lot done, and hope to finish the article I've been working on before the school year starts. If I don't quite make this goal (I've gotten distracted lately by computer problems. We got new computers at work this summer. Need I say more?), I'll just have to be sure to keep making time every day to keep working on it! It would be tragic to lose momentum on this project.

I am glad that I went to the conferences at Woodbrooke, and that I also scheduled research time there. Not only did I get a lot done, but I got good affirmation of what I am working on. It really means a lot when others value what you are doing!

It was also great to go to Boxwood again. It gave me the chance to take stock anew of my musical life and begin to formulate new ideas about the place of music in my life.

Both of these trips helped me to affirm dimensions of my life that are really important to me. I feel better in touch with who I really am and what my life is really all about.

I've made a lot of progress this past year in recovering from burnout and reorienting my life from other-centeredness to getting back in touch with my own sense of call. It will still be a challenge to live true to this shift once the school year gets going, because I will be very busy again, and will still be chair of my department. But I'll be patient with myself and will do my best.

There is more that I hope to accomplish this summer, before the academic year begins again. If I am successful, I'll be reporting on this; if not, I'll still be pleased with what I have done well this summer.

In the meantime, the summer is not over. There still is time, and I will continue to exercise the spiritual discipline of living in the present!

Back from Summer Travels

2008-08-01T11:56:00.004-04:00

I'm back from my second and final summer trip -- to Boxwood again. It was a really great experience.

I took the train and really appreciated the reflection time if offered me. On the way there, I read parts of Barry Green's The Mastery of Music, as well as parts of William Ury's The Power of a Positive No. On the way back, I mostly slept and edited my mini-discs. I was really exhausted after a week of little sleep in order to fit everything in: full days of classes and full evenings of concerts and late-night sessions!

I was in a pretty good place musically and psychologically for this. I was able to just focus and learn without the distraction and interference of my usual confidence issues with music. Is it that I'm feeling confident at last? It is more that I've come into acceptance that music is a necessary part of my life. I no longer feel apologetic about this. I no longer have a guilty sense of being a "pretender." It doesn't matter whether I'm "good enough" or not. Of course I'd like to get really good. But issues of being good or not being good do not matter to me any more. What interests me more now is authenticity of engagement in the journey itself.

Engaging with music is a lifelong journey, and I perceive my own playing and the playing of others in a totally new way now. Of course I still love brilliant expressive playing, but I've come to appreciate that that is not all that there is to hear in music. A skilled listener can listen to music that does not always reach the heights of brilliance, and still find much of value in that music.

Somewhat related, this year at Boxwood, David McGuinness led a series of classes on "Listening." (By the way, he has a fun blog.) We were guided through various exercises that helped us to sharpen our listening skills and respond more quickly, intentionally, and accurately to what we were hearing. David opened these classes with eloquent words on the importance to musicians of good listening. All week, those of us in this group were hearing the birds, traffic, and fog horns in new ways!

There is lots more to say, about Boxwood and about my work this summer, but I also have a lot to catch up on now as the summer begins to draw to a close, so I will close for now but will continue to write as I can.

More Thoughts from My Recent Trip

2008-07-10T16:03:00.004-04:00

I wanted to share some more thoughts and impressions from my recent trip to Woodbrooke and the conferences.

First of all, we were sad that Richard M could not attend the FAHE conference this year. We missed him. The Quaker Philosophers did gather again for the second year in a row to talk about the intersection of our lives as Quakers and our lives as Philosophers. It was good to share further thoughts about this.

For myself, I am really happy to have connected Quakerism and philosophy explicitly in my research now. The more I work on this, the happier I become. And I was delighted to find that so many others are interested in my project. I'm hoping to finish an article by the end of the summer to send out for publication.

I also spent a lot of time thinking about Quakerism, worrying about the declining numbers of Quakers, and wondering what kind of renewal is needed. I am encouraged by the signs of renewal in the Quaker blogging world, and the Convergent Friends discussions. But what I was wondering specifically, due to the nature of the conferences I was attending, was whether Quaker researchers have a special role in the renewal of Quakerism.

A theme that came up a lot in the second conference (the joint conference of the Quaker Studies Research Association and the Quaker Historians and Archivists) was whether it is time to write a new comprehensive history of Quakerism, in the spirit of the "Rowntree" Quaker History Series. That series was written at a particular time, and had its own purpose. So why now is there talk about writing a new and updated history? What is it about this time that prompts this question now? What would be the purpose for doing this now?

It is not surprising to me that we Friends do want to take stock of our history in a comprehensive way again now. I myself can think of several answers to the above questions, but I think it may be more interesting to leave them as questions -- or queries perhaps.

There are other disciplines involved in Quaker Studies as well, besides history: sociology, theology, economics, philosophy. And of course the interdisciplinary field of Peace Studies intersects with Quaker Studies too. What role could these fields play in the renewal of Quakerism?

Another question/query I've been thinking about is whether Quaker scholars have a responsibility to write more about Quakerism for a wider audience. A lot of our writing is and needs to be for each other. When we write for wider audiences, we tend to keep our Quakerism in the background, and often don't mention it at all. Probably some of this writing has to be this way. But, all of this leaves a gap. Should more of us be writing about Quakerism for a wider audience?

Back Home Again

2008-07-01T16:37:00.003-04:00

Yesterday I departed from Woodbrooke and returned home.

It was a long day of travels. Of course, flying west, we chase the sun, which extends the day. This time, we covered 3 hours in about 7.5 hours, making each hour 2 hours and 30 minutes long! (See my earlier post about my arrival). We were flying a northern route to avoid the worst of the strong headwinds, and we had spectacular views of Greenland!

My visit to Woodbrooke was amazingly wonderful in many ways. I re-met old friends, and met lots of new friends. I got a lot of good research done. I worked very hard, and was happily tired by the end of my two weeks. Although I was sad to leave, I was also really fine about returning home, even looking forward to it. I have a feeling I will continue to find good excuses to return, and so this felt more like a "good-bye for now" than a "good-bye and I may never see you again!"

One of the nice things about getting older is the way one's sense of time changes. Long stretches of time no longer seem like solid walls of separation. Time in and of itself no longer seems real, as such. Instead, time and space shift and bend to allow changes, and to give you different experiences. In that shifting, you are brought close to some people for a time, and to other people for another length of time, and you go back and forth, and in all of that, relationships are formed and evolve and change, and they are what is real.

Everyone feels close in my heart, and so I do not feel far away from them at all.

Immersion in Quaker History, and Reflections on Language

2008-06-29T02:09:00.003-04:00

The joint conference of the Quaker Studies Research Association and the Quaker Historians and Archivists here at Woodbrooke has been going well. Not only was I already immersed in Quaker history from my own reading, but now this weekend I've been surrounded by historians talking about other dimensions of Quaker history as well. As I read some very old books from the library, I cannot help but wonder which early Friends may have themselves touched these books!

The version of the Bible that is common here is the New Revised Standard Version, Anglicized Edition. Intrigued, I read the Preface that explains why an "Anglicized Version" is needed. Short answer: British English and American English are diverging! I have been trying to notice the divergences, but I do not pick up on them too easily. I have spent enough time in the British Isles in the past that I adjust to the differences fairly easily. But there have been enough Americans around for these two conferences that I do notice the differences when I see them get confused. Last night, for example, the Friends in Residence offered us "torches" if we wanted to go into Bournville to watch the fireworks (they were having some kind of festival there). The Americans in the room suddenly imagined us all trekking through the night carrying flaming branches of wood, while the British and Australians were just thinking of (what Americans call) flashlights!

Besides, I have been reading lots of 17th century English, which confuses all the more any sense I have of what "normal" English should be like! Now I have a habit of suspending belief about what any word or phrase I read or hear is supposed to mean! (For example: "Is that use of 'want' supposed to mean 'desire' or 'lack'?")

In the preface to a new "old" version of Barclay's Apology, the editor explains why it is better not to translate 17th century English into contemporary English. The English back then was very close to English now, he insists. If you try, you can get used to it. And I have found this to be true.

I cannot help but wonder how someone from back then would hear our use of English now. Can we imagine how much English will change in the future?

Happy!

2008-06-24T11:12:00.002-04:00

The rest of the FAHE conference went very well. I thought I would be blue when that conference ended and most people left; while I was a little sad to see friends go, I was also simultaneously happy that I did not have to leave so soon myself.

I have been working further on my research, using the excellent Quaker library here. The rhythm of the days, and the wonderful spirit here, make for a very supportive and inspiring atmosphere. I would add that the beautiful gardens help as well, but instead they are quite distracting, really! When I go for my daily walk, it's hard not to spend hours and hours out there! But I'm not really complaining, and, to tell the truth, this does add to the supportive and inspiring atmosphere, of course.

On Thursday, those who went on the 1652 Quaker tour will come back through, and it will be fun to see them again. On Friday, the joint conference of the Quaker Studies Research Association and the Quaker Historians and Archivists begins. I chose not to present my work to these groups, because sometimes historians think that the way philosophers work with history is strange! Instead, I will talk informally with people about what I am working on and ask for suggestions and advice. And I will attend the presentations of others to get a feel for the world of high-level academic Quaker Studies.

So far, I have been getting good encouragement about how I am bringing my philosophical and my Quaker interests together directly in my research. It is very exciting to me to be doing this. And to find that others find this interesting too and are encouraging me is just wonderful. I feel like I am finally more directly moving into the kind of academic identity I really want -- one that includes my Quaker self integrally.

Conference Observations

2008-06-21T01:57:00.003-04:00

The conference is going very well so far. Some of the sessions really feel like "gathered Meetings."

A theme that I keep noticing both in sessions and in my conversations with people is "living with creative tensions." Don't try to force resolution. Or, more importantly, don't berate yourself for not being able to force resolution.

Yet, funnily enough (as they say here), this bit of advice itself stands in creative tension with another theme I notice: the quest for the integrated life (in contrast to the divided life).

Do creative tensions mark a divided life? If we should not try to find resolution, how then do we find our way to the integrated life?

The conference theme is "Where Faith and Practice Meet." The tension we talk about as Quaker academics is the tension we often feel between our Quakerness and some of the demands of the academic life.

One suggestion that emerged yesterday that I found especially helpful: "Where do faith and practice meet? Answer: Love. Or: Grace, the highest form of Love."

Happy to Have Arrived!

2008-06-18T02:41:00.000-04:00

I made it to Woodbrooke for my conferences and research!

My travels all went well. I departed on Monday evening. The flight was nice. While the sun did set, it never got completely dark. There was a band of orange twilight fading to a brilliant deep blue stretching from the north-northwest to the north-northeast, and I had a lovely view from my window seat. At 12:45 am (according to the time zone I was leaving), the sun rose again!

Trying unsuccessfully to sleep, I engaged in mental computations and realized that, flying east as we were on this plane, the combination of our speed and our crossing through time zones meant that each hour we traversed was only taking 35 minutes. Thus we managed to cover 12 hours in only 7 hours! (I like putting it this way. It shows a human-experiential form of the strange relativity of time and distance.)

Because I got so little sleep on the flight, it was hard not to doze off on the train ride to Birmingham, even though I was so happy to be here and loved looking out the window! From the train station, I took the bus to Woodbrooke. Even though it was more than two years ago that I had come before, it all felt so familiar again, and I was unbelievably happy to arrive. Even on the hair-raising bus ride, I found myself smiling uncontrollably, and at times laughing. I didn't care that the people around me might have been wondering about my sanity. "How and why could this scruffy traveler be so happy?" they may have wondered.

And then was the magical moment of walking up to and into the entrance of Woodbrooke. I felt like I was coming home again, back to a very important spiritual home for me.

I know it is the kind of place that a lot of people regard as an important spiritual home. We are very fortunate, those of us who find places like this in our lives!

I quickly got settled in. All traces of fatigue had evaporated -- my happiness blasted all the fatigue away. A few other early arrivals were happy to see me, and I was happy to see them. And I was delighted to greet again those who work at Woodbrooke who remember me from my visit from 2 years ago (and one who had been a resident with me during the year I was here a while back!).

Even though normally in life I am an introvert, some extrovert side of me emerges at times and in places like this! I chatted happily with people during tea, for the rest of the afternoon, over dinner, and after dinner.

At 9:00 pm local time, I did finally make it to bed (reluctantly skipping Epilogue -- just this once!) and had a pretty good night's sleep. At one point I woke up in the middle of the night at first thinking, "oh, it was just a dream -- I'm not really at Woodbrooke ... am I? Oh, wait, I am!" Amazed awe.

Thus begins my new journey...

Soon to Depart

2008-06-15T09:22:00.004-04:00

My next adventure begins soon. I depart tomorrow for Woodbrooke for the FAHE conference. I will arrive in the morning on Tuesday.

Lately, I have found myself unusually emotional and anxious. (Ok, once upon a time, anxiety was a way of life for me. It's actually kind of nice to find myself experiencing it as an unwelcome intrusion again: that suggests that I actually have become mostly not-anxious in life in general, which is good!) I think the reason I am so worked up ironically is because I am so looking forward to this trip! I can hardly believe I am really going. You see, Woodbrooke is one of my very favorite places of all. It means so much to me because of the year I spent there way back when. This was such an important year for me.

I had dropped out of college. I was transitioning from thinking of myself as an aspiring scientist to thinking of myself as an aspiring philosopher and theologian, although I did not fully realize this then. Woodbrooke at that time had a year-long program of informal studies (divided into three terms), and I was fortunate enough to be able to piece together the means to stay for the year, with the help of scholarship assistance and work-study assistance from Woodbrooke. I did, in a leap of faith, pour in every penny of my own remaining savings, as the final step that made this possible. Looking back, I admire that I was brave enough to trust my own intuitions this much, because it really was the right decision. That year at Woodbrooke was spiritually formative for me.

I studied Quaker Studies. I did a lot of writing that helped me to shift my intellectual identity into philosophy and theology. I met a number of people who kept encouraging me to continue my formal studies, and to do so at a Quaker college, such as Earlham (which is in fact what I did next in life). I loved the daily discipline of two times of worship per day (in the morning and the evening). I met people from all over the world. I played a lot of music with a small chamber group we formed. The community and the structure of daily life were wonderfully supportive to me.

When I went back two years ago to spend a month there when I was on sabbatical, I found it wonderful all over again. A lot had changed, but the same supportive spirit was there. I've written about that experience here (March 2006).

This time I will be there two weeks, framed by two conferences, with a little time in-between for research.

Hard at Work on Research

2008-06-07T09:46:00.005-04:00

Structure of My Summer Days

This year, I did not go into free fall in the transition from the busy pace of the academic year to the highly unstructured summer. This past semester, I actually adopted a pretty workable pace of life and so I didn't end the year gasping for breath and exhausted, and didn't feel the ground fall out from under me as the year ended. Instead, I had the foresight to put a plan into place -- a disciplined structure for my summer life -- and just kept going.

First we had some faculty development workshops which I attended. Initially, faculty complain about this happening right at the end of the academic year, but we always end up enjoying it and feeling somewhat inspired by it, and this year was no exception. Then after that, I just stepped into my new pattern of life without even thinking about it.

Here's how it works. I get up, have breakfast, and head into work as usual, except that instead of going to my office, I go to my library carrel. Then I work all morning on my research and writing. Usually I find it so much fun that it's hard to tear myself away for lunch, but I make myself do so at a reasonable time anyway, because I have learned that overenthusiasm is the first stage of burnout! It is really important to pace oneself. I have a tendency to push myself really really hard -- which is part of why I got so severely burned out to begin with! Now I'm trying to stop just before I really feel ready. That way, I am always eager to get back to work!

After lunch, I do go into my office to deal with administrative matters in my life as chair, and to attend to the one summer independent study project I took on this year. If I finish what I need to finish in time, I go back to my carrel and resume work on research. If the afternoon's tasks take all afternoon, then I call it a day when dinner time draws near.

In the evenings, I go for my walk, practice music, and maybe do some more reading related to my research.

Throughout the day, if I run into friends over lunch or when taking short breaks to get a cup of tea, I go ahead and take time to chat and catch up.

It's a very nice life!

My Research

I am really excited about my current research project. I have been focusing on a paper I am presenting at this year's Friends Association for Higher Education (FAHE) conference, to be held at one of my favorite places of all, the Woodbrooke Quaker Study Centre! Some of you may have guessed that this was where I spent a month during my sabbatical a couple of years back. I also had spent a year there once upon a time, a long time ago. So it is very exciting to me that we are having our FAHE conference there this year! I will be staying on after the conference to continue my research, and then will also attend the joint conference of the Quaker Studies Research Association (QSRA) and the Quaker Historians and Archivists (CQHA), also being held at Woodbrooke.

My project requires me to be reading some of the writings of the early Friends, and I always love reading these early writings. I am especially thankful to the Digital Quaker Collection at the Earlham School of Religion for providing access to many of these early writings.

I have been trying to track down something obscure and difficult, that is not easy to track down using typical academic search techniques, but I've been making good progress and so I am very pleased at how this is coming along. I feel like a detective. Initially I had an intuition about something, but finding the historical evidence to support my theory was harder than I expected. Still, one clue leads to another, and slowly I've been piecing together a story that I think has not really been told in the way I am telling it. So I am eager to receive feedback from learned Quaker scholars and philosophers, to find out if I really am on the right track. If so, I plan to develop this into an article I will send off for publication.

I'll share more about this as it develops.

Memorial Day 2008

2008-05-26T10:08:00.004-04:00

In the last two years (2006 and 2007), I have been posting some numbers for Memorial Day, and wish today to continue in that tradition.

Number killed on 9/11: 2993 (same as listed last year). Wikipedia breaks this number down as follows:

"There were 2,974 fatalities, excluding the 19 hijackers: 246 on the four planes (from which there were no survivors), 2,603 in New York City in the towers and on the ground, and 125 at the Pentagon. An additional 24 people remain listed as missing. All of the fatalities in the attacks were civilians except for 55 military personnel killed at the Pentagon. More than 90 countries lost citizens in the attacks on the World Trade Center." (Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9/11)

Number of U.S. killed as a result of U.S. military activities since 9/11: 4758 (up from 3455 as of this time last year)
507 U.S. military killed in Afghanistan (up from 390 as of last year),
4082 U.S. military killed in War on Iraq (up from 2844 as of last year),
at least 169 U.S. civilians (contractors) killed in Iraq (source for last year's summary number of 398 not available, but I found this number of U.S. contractors from icasualties.org).

Sources:
http://www.antiwar.com/casualties/
http://icasualties.org/oif/Default.aspx

Number of Iraqi civilians killed since War on Iraq began: 84,050-91,713 (up from 64,400-70,540 reported last year).
(These figures are critiqued by many as being low estimates. See the Iraqi body count webpage, linked below.)

Source:
http://www.iraqbodycount.net/

If you find figures that you believe are more accurate than the ones here, please let me know in "comments," and please cite your sources.

Lessons from Burnout

2008-05-24T12:02:00.002-04:00

Today I thought I would sum up what I have learned from burnout.

What burnout is: It's not just exhaustion, but exhaustion coupled with a sense of failure, or some sense that, after all of that effort, little was successfully accomplished in relation to the costs to your own well-being and maybe the well-being of those close to you as well.

It is important to note that the actual failure (or lack of success) might not be real. But to the person experiencing burnout, it seems real. The perception of failure may be biased by one or more of the following: (a) one's own habit of low self-esteem; (b) others who have been helped may not have expressed their appreciation out loud; (c) what failed was relatively minor in relation to accompanying successes, but the failure got a lot of attention and the successes got very little attention.

At any rate, this analysis of the experiences that contribute to burnout also gives clues as to how to heal from it.

1. Rest and time are important. While easy to say, this can be hard to accomplish. Life may not automatically let up for the burned out person, giving them time to rest. Hence...

2. The burned out person needs to find a way to scale back in order to create the right kind of time and space in which to rest. This can be hard -- it may require retraining bad habits of overcommitment. Ironically enough, the sense of failure can be useful. To understand why, see next...

3. The burned out person needs to process the sense of failure very carefully, avoiding the danger of denial on the one hand (pretending it never happened) and the danger of negative self-flagellation on the other hand (overexaggerating its importance). Is the failure real? How significant is it really, in proportion to related successes? Does it signify the importance of doing things differently next time, or does it signify that this is a kind of challenge that you need to let go of, and hand over to others? There are times when what we can learn from failure is "who we are not," and in truth, this can be quite liberating! I have found that saying, "No, I can't do that because, to be honest, I'm just not very good at it," with confidence and maybe even humor is far more effective than any other way of saying "no" I have ever tried! When I try more apologetic ways of saying "no," people have a hard time taking me seriously and keep asking me over and over again. But when I say, in a confident instead of pathetic way, "I'm really not very good at that," people do back down! So processing failures well, learning from them, and simplifying one's life accordingly, is a very important part of healing from burnout! It is a process in which you eventually forgive yourself, liberate yourself from future related disappointment, and can then move on toward a more positive future, with your life focused more effectively on what you really are good at and successful in. This leads to...

4. You need to have some positive, confidence-building experiences. These are not always easy to plan or manufacture, of course. But they also do not just "happen." You need to know yourself well enough to be alert for the right kinds of opportunities, and assertive enough to take them when they come.

5. You also need to pay attention to building a good support system. The tendency in burnout is to withdraw, and some withdrawal may be an important part of the healing process. But you have to be careful not to withdraw too much. Stay in touch with good supportive friends. Tell them you need their patience and support. Don't be afraid to seek professional help. And gradually work to nurture new positive relationships. It's okay during such a time to avoid trying or difficult relationships as much as possible and focus on the positive relationships as much as you can, because this is an important part of your healing. If troubled relationships need attention, you are better off waiting until you feel stronger before pouring a lot of attention into healing them.

So, in sum: simplify your life, rest, be patient with yourself, give yourself time, process your sense of failure without dwelling on it unhealthily, seek out positive, confidence-building experiences, and bolster your support system.

Coming Out of the Cocoon

2008-05-17T12:15:00.005-04:00

I feel like lately I've been all wrapped up in a cocoon, but now I'm finally coming out. I feel all raw and bedraggled, but new. The warm spring air feels good. My wings are still damp and all folded up, but starting to open up and come to life. I'm not claiming to have turned into some spectacularly beautiful butterfly -- more like a drab, ho-hum moth -- but hey, having wings now is pretty cool! I look forward to seeing what flying is like. I'm excited about what it will be like to establish a whole new relationship with earth and sky. Already, I find myself perceiving the world in a whole new way: three-dimensionally instead of just two-dimensionally. A new life opens up before me.

This is what life can be like. Sometimes we have to curl up in a cocoon for a while as a prelude to a new transformation. The cocoon offers protection. It also hides from view the messiness of dramatic transformation. And the confinement of the cocoon prepares the being inside to desire and appreciate the much-expanded freedom that its completed transformation will bring.

This is what my life has been like. After years of steadily increasing intensity, by the end of last year, I was seriously burned out -- so much so that I didn't even realize it. Instead, I was dimly aware of the kind of depression that severe burnout brings, without fully understanding its cause.

So I curled up and withdrew as much as I could without letting go of all that I absolutely needed to do to keep my life and work moving along. I didn't realize that what I was doing was closing myself up in a cocoon. I had no idea that there would be a time when suddenly I would emerge and find myself transformed. I just instinctively needed peace and protection, time to heal and time to transform.

I don't really know what's next. I'm just happy to see the sun, and amazed to notice that I have wings now.

Another Year!

2008-05-16T23:14:00.003-04:00

We are finishing up another year! It's amazing how quickly an academic year can spin by! You're busy and busy and busy, and then all of a sudden, it's over! Just like that. You look around, dazed, watching the dust settle, and ask, "what just happened?"

And then you start to remember who you really are.

But things are not quite totally over yet. I did get my grades in, and that's a big moment. The pace changes rather suddenly after that, because life is no longer so intensely deadline-driven. There are still deadlines and meetings, but they all become more widely spaced.

The big change will be after graduation. This weekend will be busy with all of the graduation-related events, and then Commencement itself. At a small college, we are expected to participate in all of this, and it is good to do so. The students really do appreciate it. They get all sentimental about everything, and it's nice to catch these glimpses of just what this has all meant to them.

I am feeling especially close to this year's graduating class. There are a lot of students I'm really going to miss.

My classes ended very well, and I enjoyed reading all of my students' final papers.

I'm really looking forward to the summer. I'm very ready to get back to my research and writing again. I'm going to two conferences this summer, and the Boxwood Wooden Flute Festival again (as I've done and written about in the past).

And I've had some important breakthroughs that I'll try to write about soon.

Catching Up

2008-05-04T11:10:00.003-04:00

Wow, I actually skipped the whole month of April! I don't think I've ever missed a whole month of posting before. Sorry about that!

Here is a short run-down of the news:

1. I've been trying to adjust to the realization that I have to continue as chair for two more years. Given this information, it is impossible to continue doing all that I have been doing. There were some things that I took on because I thought this was my last year as chair and so I thought that some new time would open up for me starting next year. So now I have had to re-evaluate what to continue with. I have tried to include others in this conversation, to help me discern. I came up with what I thought were very good ideas about how to keep going with the most important things that I uniquely could offer (and that I felt called to offer), but the powers that be would have none of it, unfortunately. I finally summon my energies to assert myself, my needs, and my priorities, but the world does not budge one inch. Feeling defeated, I am now having to let go of some things that I have put a lot of time and energy into in recent years. The other people who have been involved are disappointed. This has been hard.

2. (Related?) I came down with a bad case of strep throat in early April. Then it came back! I've now finished a second and quite powerful course of antibiotics and am glad to be off of that and feeling better!

3. (Related) I have renewed my vows to take better care of myself. Now that the weather is getting nicer, I'm going to reinstate an exercise plan. Phase 1 will be the modest (but highly effective) 30 minutes/30 days walking plan. It's very simple. Walk at least 30 minutes for 30 days in a row. That's long enough to establish this as a habit and build a base of fitness from which I can then start running again if I wish. Or I can just continue this much for the rest of my life and still be much better off than I have been lately! The "rules" I'm establishing around this are: (1) I am not allowed to try to run before these first 30 days (because I don't want to pressure myself or burn myself out with over-enthusiasm), and (2) I can walk longer than 30 minutes if I ever should wish so, but I still have to keep going out every day no matter what for at least 30 minutes.

4. I've recently come to terms with how severely burned out I was after the ridiculous busyness of last year. This year has been much more manageable, and slowly I've been healing from the burnout. Burnout is not only exhaustion from working too hard for too long, but also includes a sense of discouragement (some sense that all of that effort had not really been worth the cost). The more manageable load this year has helped me recover from the exhaustion component; the psychological component has been more challenging. It requires careful analysis of the causes of the sense of discouragement. In my complex life, this is complex work. There's no easily identifiable single element. But I've been making real progress and am starting to feel a real sense of hope that, even with continuing as chair for two more years, I can still bring my life closer to how I want it to be.

5. Related: A lot of the work I've been doing this year has been to shift from an essentially apologetic orientation to the world ("I'm sorry for taking up space on this planet. To make up for this, let me do something Spectacularly Good to justify my existence") to something so different I don't yet have a name or phrase to describe it. My long habit of living apologetically and orienting myself to (thinking that I could be) making everyone else around me happy ended up trapping me within a huge set of obligations and responsibilities that began to be too much for me, leaving me with two daunting tasks: (1) find a responsible way out of this tangled web, and (2) learn to live in a new way that would prevent this from happening again. I have been making my way out of the tangled web, one strand at a time. And I have have mostly succeeded in not adding new strands to the web. And I am slowly creating new habits of setting my own agenda and taking better care of myself.

6. I do need to come up for a name for the new way of being I am trying to establish for myself. It involves setting my own agenda, and taking better care of myself, and this kind of shift initially feels like a shift to a more selfish way of being, but that's not really it at all. All along, what has been centrally important to me is what I think of as "trying to discern what God calls me to do."

All along, the discernment process has included both looking within and looking outside of myself for clues and guidance. What do I like doing? What I am good at? What gives me joy? What is easy? What is hard but feels like an exciting challenge? What feels like it goes against my nature in potentially harmful ways? What do the people I trust ask for from me? What needs in the world do I feel most drawn towards addressing? What builds me up? What brings me down? What do people appreciate about me? What do I most value about myself?

But I had been giving priority to responding to what others want from me, lately in life. Now I am shifting priority to the more inward modes of discernment. The people around me may like me and appreciate me, and may want things from me that I am glad to offer, but they still don't know me as well as I know myself, and their caring for me is limited and somewhat conditioned just because there are limits to what any person can know about another.

Ultimately, I have a kind of responsibility for and to myself that no other person can do for me, no matter how much they care. And I owe it to others (as well as myself) to take this responsibility seriously, so that I can be the best person I can be. It is up to me to do this, precisely because no one else can do this for me. This is why it looks selfish but actually is not.

I know I have been working on this sort of thing for a long time, and maybe keep repeating it here in this blog, but this is, I think, a hard point for some people (such as myself) to "get." Maybe it's harder for women than for men, because women are acculturated to value and exemplify a certain model of "unselfishness." I certainly don't want to abandon unselfishness altogether. But there's a difference between a self-sacrificial unselfishness, and a non-self-sacrificial version of unselfishness. The latter is what I have been trying to find.

Trying to Figure Out What "Money" Is

2008-03-29T17:47:00.004-04:00

Our Meeting is working through Seeds of Violence, Seeds of Hope, a very helpful document produced by the Friends Testimonies and Economics, a joint project of the Earthcare Working Group of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting and Quaker Earthcare Witness. It is a study-guide for those interested in environmental concerns to learn more about economic issues as they relate to issues of ecological sustainability (and to some extent social justice issues as well).

I was just reading the article, "Money, Banking, and Finance" (by Ed Dreby, assisted by Keith Helmuth and Gary Lapreziosa), and was astonished to learn what money is and how it is created.

What I didn't fully understand before is how the process of lending money at interest actually creates new money! If I am understanding correctly, here is how it works. Banks hold a lot of money that people have deposited that just sits there. So they lend it out at interest, so that it can go back out into the economy and do things. (This much I did know.) When people pay it back, with interest, then the interest is the creation of new money! What this system does is spur people to have to produce more than they might otherwise have produced. Ideally, what they have thereby produced in some sense now backs up the new money created through those interest payments.

If ideally new money is created at a healthy rate, that constitutes a healthy growing economy. There is this steady stream of new money being created and backed up by productivity.

This is thought to benefit everyone, because lenders make a profit (interest collected), and borrowers are able to do more and produce more than they otherwise would have been able to do.

Now, in the real world, it gets more complicated than this, mainly because there are lots of factors that play into the rate of growth, and if the economy either grows too fast or slows too much, then that has other effects that are problematic. Two such factors are (1) not everyone can repay their loans with interest, and (2) there are very likely ecological limits to production rates.

So, all of this gives rise to questions I have. If anyone knows enough about economics to be able to help me with these questions, I would appreciate it!

1. Is growth necessary for a healthy economy? It seems that this system ultimately depends upon a few having concentrations of more money than they really need, so that they can use the lending of this money as a spur to make large numbers of people have to work hard. It is very strange to me that our system is such that some people are making lots of money off of other people doing lots of work. (But maybe there is more justice to this than I realize, since bankers and investors are doing some work in keeping track of all of this, and do deserve to be paid for this work.)

2. Is the reason that growth (the creation of new money) is important ultimately because it is necessary to support an ever-growing population? If so, if population growth stabilized, would we no longer need a growing economy? Would there still be ways to continue to power the circulation of existing money in a steady-state economy?

3. Does ecological sustainability ultimately demand a steady-state economy instead of a growing one? Or is there some level of continuing economic growth that is consistent with ecological sustainability? That is, is there some natural pace of renewability of natural resources that correlates with a modest level of continued economic growth?

Happy Easter!

2008-03-23T08:49:00.001-04:00

Recently, I accidentally stumbled across my Easter post from last year.

Five Supports of Well-Being

2008-03-21T09:24:00.006-04:00

In trying to bolster support for myself, I've been taking stock of what I regard as my five supports of well-being: my spiritual life, my intellectual life, my musical life, my relationships, and my physical health/fitness. If all of these are going reasonably well in my life, I feel well-supported and meaningfully engaged with the world around me.

I've seen other lists of the basic aspects of life and well being. Sometimes there are four: physical, mental, emotional, spiritual. More secular sources sometimes list just three: physical, mental, psychological. Occasionally even mental/intellectual is dropped off as a separate category, included as part of "psychological."

Admittedly, in my own listing of five there can be overlap. For example, in my way of conceptualizing these, "spiritual" really includes all the rest; "music" and "relationships" both relate to the emotional dimension of life; and my listing maybe ignores an overall assessment of psychological well-being (in part because I subsume that within the "spiritual"); etc.

But I would like to offer a generalized version of my five supports for others to consider. The generalized version would look like this: spiritual; mental/intellectual; creativity; relationships; physical health/fitness.

Here are some descriptions:

1. Spiritual: Sense of wholeness, integrity, integration. Sense of meaning or purpose to your life. A sense of what your life is all about in relation to ultimate reality.

2. Mental/intellectual: What you are learning. Inputs into your life and understanding. Letting more and more reality into your being and comprehension.

3. Creativity: What you have to give to the world. What you uniquely offer. Your expressive powers. What difference you make. What love, beauty, wisdom you give back to the world.

4. Relationships: Overall quality of your relationships. How well-supported you feel by family, friends, and colleagues. Whether you feel a good sense of belonging. Whether you experience meaningful connection with those around you. What people value about you. What you give in relationships.

5. Physical health/fitness: Assessment of your overall health. How well you manage any health limitations you may have. Assessment of your fitness level. How well you take care of your physical well-being.

I have been finding it helpful to take stock of the state of each of these in my own life right now.

Then I think about how I would like each of these to be (what my vision for myself is in each of these respects).

Then I consider what small step I can take to bring each of these to a stronger level (because for myself, I find all five supports still standing, but with serious cracks!). For those who find one or more strong enough, then you can ask which one(s) most need attention, and consider what you can do to strengthen the one(s) that need strengthening.

Why It Has Been Hard to Blog Lately

2008-03-18T16:12:00.004-04:00

Perceptive readers may be concerned that I've only been writing about snow lately. And even though I am genuinely excited about all of the snow we have been getting, those perceptive readers would be right to be concerned. While my spirits did pick up over winter break and carried through into the first few weeks of my semester, I've been having a hard time again lately.

On the surface, things have been going well. My classes have continued to go very well indeed, and I hope to write soon to share more details about some of the great things that have been happening in those classes. Also, I have kept reasonable momentum on my research.

What has thrown me off, though, was finding out that I do have to continue as Chair for another two years. This was raised as a possibility back in November, but then I thought I had successfully resolved the situation in my own favor.

It turns out I was wrong.

There are a lot of ways in my life that I have been doing my best to assert myself, and people seem in the moment to be taking me seriously, but then when it comes down to it, nothing changes. Such a sense of powerlessness does lead to depression, my counselor pointed out to me. He told me not to give up, and urged me to look hard for what I can control in my life.

Meanwhile, well-intentioned friends have pointed out to me that it is an honor to be Chair, and that lots of people want this kind of opportunity but are frustrated not to get it. Today's online version of the Chronicle of Higher Education had an article about a philosophy department Chair who lost his Chair position because he refused to commit to being in his office from 8:00 to 5:00 every weekday. I sent this to my counselor with the note, "if only it could be so easy for me to lose my position as Chair!"

But I do realize that that Chair might well have been very disappointed. And I do realize that there are people whose problems are much worse than my own. I realize that there are many ways that I am fortunate to have the life that I have. The forces of poverty, for example, are limiting and soul-crushing. But some of the forces of privilege can be limiting and soul-crushing too. Privilege presses hard against personal integrity and in favor of a certain kind of conformity, and so those who want to use positions of privilege to bring forth justice may meet considerable resistance.

Meeting sustained resistance over time leads to feeling overwhelmed, burnt-out, powerless, and depressed. You can feel pressured by almost everyone around you, with almost no one being actually supportive. You can feel as if great forces keep pushing you to take on roles that go against your very nature.

Sometimes my students say, "everything happens for a reason!" and I hear in their words an optimism about life that I once had myself. For a while in my life, I thought that God's hand was in everything that happened to us. I did not want to believe otherwise. I did not want to acknowledge that tragedy was a real possibility: that life's twists and turns could sometimes throw people off the path of fulfilling their true calling.

I still do not want to believe this, but I do believe that tragic things really can and do happen.

I do not think that my own life has quite taken a tragic turn, but things are serious right now. I'm at a crucial moment. Certain forces in my life have been unrelenting. For a long time I was holding strong and refusing to let these forces crush my hopes and my vision for my life and for what I could do for the world, but my spirits now are greatly strained.

I do not think that it is God challenging me so. I look to God for inspiration and support. And I look hard in my life for what love, wisdom, and support I can find.

I have not given up. I'm doing all I can to stay in touch with who I know myself most truly to be, and I'm looking hard for ways to keep that flame alive.

Most Recent Snowstorm

2008-03-13T22:01:00.003-04:00

Our snowstorm over the weekend brought us another 15 inches of snow, bringing this season's total to 112 inches. Then we got another 2 inches, and so now we are at 114 inches. (The yearly average where I live is 60 inches).

Soon I'll write about something other than snow -- I promise!

Even More Snow

2008-03-08T11:12:00.002-05:00

97 inches -- but it's snowing again. I think we are really over 100 inches now, but I'll wait and see what the official numbers are reported to be.

Yet More Snow

2008-03-05T11:11:00.001-05:00

94 inches.

More Snow

2008-02-29T20:18:00.002-05:00

Now we are at 90.5 inches.

Programming My Unprogrammed Worship

2008-02-24T10:37:00.004-05:00

The Quaker Meeting I attend is unprogrammed, and I greatly value unprogrammed worship. But gradually over the past couple of years I have been struggling a bit, not with spiritual dryness, exactly, but something I would better describe as spiritual frozenness. Unprogrammed worship has generally been very powerful for me, as in the worship I have often felt "melted down by God's love" (I think this is a paraphrase of a quotation from Thomas Kelly).

Two weeks ago I again experienced that melting, for the first time in quite a while. Last week I felt locked up in frozenness again.

But back in January, I attended an evening retreat entitled "A Year of Living Intentionally." We worked on formulating our intentions for the year, and at the end of the retreat were given a jar filled with questions on little slips of paper. We wrote out our intentions and taped them to our jars and were encouraged to use the questions in the jar for journaling. I came home and experimentally pulled out one question, which evoked dismay and guilt for how deeply "off" I was feeling at that time, and so I put it back in the jar and stashed the jar out of sight and almost forgot about it.

Meanwhile, other exercises from that retreat have been very helpful to me, even playing a significant role in my recent breakthroughs.

Suddenly today I remembered the jar. I pulled it out, and opened it, and dumped out all of the slips of paper, and read through them all. They are great questions. As I read through them, I thought that they would function very well as Quakerly Queries. About a dozen of them immediately and powerfully shook the rigid framework of my freezing-up-again soul.

And so I thought to myself: "Maybe I should use these as Queries to 'program' my own unprogrammed worship experience in Meeting."

One should, of course, program one's unprogrammed worship very carefully and tentatively! But what I really mean is "preparing heart and mind." I am not really going to force myself through a pre-planned structure no matter what else happens in worship. I need to be open to and sensitive to how the spirit moves among us.

But if I feel frozen, I will hold these Queries like a blow-torch (or at least a candle) against strategic points in the icy walls freezing up around my soul.

Here are some of the ones that speak to me this week. I may share more in the weeks to come. I will not share my own responses, but just the Queries themselves, in case these should speak to others as well:

What inspires me these days? How can I follow this and be shaped by this energy?
How can I support myself in becoming the person I want to be?
Who or what gives me energy?
What or who do I need to say yes to this week?
What or who do I need to say no to this week?
In what ways am I holding back in my life?
How do I want to feel today?

Admittedly, this set is "I" focused. But sometimes a person's major spiritual challenge is to reconnect in a living and vibrant way with God's love. It is hard to bring God's love forth into the world through your life (to "let your life speak") when struggling with the frozen-soul syndrome that depression sometimes is. It is these kinds of Queries that, right now in my life, powerfully speak to me and help me get back in touch with a version of myself whom I like: a version of myself who does feel in touch with God's love. And so I offer these in case others find this approach helpful too.

New Snow Tally

2008-02-23T11:01:00.003-05:00

In case you are interested: 84.5 inches.

The latest batch: beautifully light and fluffy and sparkly. This is my favorite kind. When it lands on your sleeve, you can see the beauty of each snowflake.

Shifts of Consciousness

2008-02-17T09:08:00.001-05:00

Breakthrough #1

I have had kind of a spiritual breakthrough. With the help of counseling, I have come to realize that my primary psychological orientation to the world is in fact spiritually flawed. Psychologically, I have adopted a primary stance of "being nice." Implicitly, I was acting as if niceness is the most important virtue. There is too much pain and unkindness out there -- we need to be nice to each other, because life is hard enough as it is!

But the spiritual problem with this orientation is that it is as if I am saying that God created the world all wrong. God created a world with too much suffering, and it is up to me to try to get rid of as much of that suffering as I can. My technique for doing so was to take it on myself, as much as I could. In this, I was implicitly thinking too highly of myself ("I am better than most at handling suffering well") and not being respectful, in a certain way, towards others (by assuming that most people cannot handle their suffering very well themselves).

Furthermore, psychologically (as well as spiritually) persisting in this orientation was not very good for me. First of all, it meant I was almost constantly suffering. Secondly, people who saw that I was good at taking on the suffering of others had a tendency to try to get me more and more to take on their suffering. Thirdly, I realized that my motivations for doing this were not as noble as I would have liked to think. While it is true that I don't like to see others suffer, it is also true that early childhood experiences built this tendency into my psyche in large part as a self-protective measure.

It protected me in two ways. If people perceived me as sensitive and nice, they were less likely to intentionally try to hurt me. And also, by developing the capacity to help others with their suffering, I learned how to endure my own suffering too. But the profound psychological flaw in this strategy is the way it actually compounds my own suffering. While it is true that people seldom want to hurt me intentionally and may even want to protect me, if what they value about me is the way I help them with their suffering, and if they protect me so that I can keep taking on their own suffering, the net effect on me is that I end up taking on a lot more suffering than is really mine to take on. Just because I learn to deal with suffering and handle it pretty well does not mean that it isn't causing me unnecessary damage. Just because it has become familiar, and therefore in an odd way comfortable, doesn't mean it is good for me--or anyone else.

This brings me to the fourth fatal flaw of this psychological orientation: my taking on others' pain (as much as a person really can, which turns out not to be as much as I had originally thought) is actually not good for them. It encourages them to shirk their own moral responsibility, and it encourages them in behaviors that could eventually turn somewhat abusive.

Coming to these realizations was initially hard, because I sensed that my concept of "compassion" was being threatened, and I did not want to let go of holding it a primary virtue! And it turns out that I was right -- I needed to let go of the concept of compassion I had. But I don't have to let go of compassion itself. I just needed to redefine it.

What new notion of compassion replaces my previous one of "eliminating suffering as much as possible"?

The new notion is something like this: "help empower people to deal with their own suffering well (if in fact they need my help, which maybe they don't)."

Breakthrough #2

I've had another breakthrough, this one in my work life. I have been somewhat successful in spending more time on a regular basis on my research and writing. And over the past week I've suddenly realized, to my surprise, that my research and writing is actually front and center in my life. There's a way that I'm thinking about it all the time -- through my teaching, and any time I have mental space to think. My attitude towards my administrative work is that I fit it in when I must.

It is only in noticing this as a shift that I realize that my previous state of consciousness was very different. It was administrative work that was front and center in my consciousness for a while. Maybe this was to be expected for a time. For me, the leadership roles I suddenly found myself in were new. I think I needed to focus a lot of attention on all of that in order to learn it. It also dominated a lot of my work time. So, I was giving that dimension of my work priority, and it was taking a lot of time -- it is no wonder that I felt that research had to be fit in around the edges. Research and writing did not seem to have quite the same immediacy and urgency that administrative tasks with their firm deadlines do.

But now this has reversed. The administrative deadlines are still immediate and urgent, but the experience I have accumulated means I can deal with these much more efficiently than I once could. So I can let research and writing push all of this to the edges, and it will still get done. Also, since I have let the research and writing gain momentum, and since this dimension of my work life is most expressive of who I see myself to be, it has acquired its own sense of importance and even urgency in my consciousness. I have invited it convincingly into the center of my soul, and after initial wary hesitation, it finally has moved (back) in and taken up residence. And I keep feeding it, and it is growing strong again, and I am letting it run the household of my soul now, so to speak. (I don't mean to suggest, by these metaphors, that this has displaced God from the center of my attention in life. How and why I engage in the research that I do is all grounded in constant discernment of spiritual call.)

So my academic trajectory has been: (1) teaching being front and center (because it was new and very challenging!) until I became chair, then (2) administration/leadership being front and center (because now this was new and very challenging), and now (3) research and writing moving to front and center at last!*

I am very happy to be here! It's not a brand new state of being. I was in this mode when I was writing my dissertation. And I was one of very few graduate students who loved working on my dissertation! So I feel like I am at last coming back to what is a very happy state of being, for me.

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*This is not the usual academic path. Most academics focus on research and teaching for a number of years before assuming administrative positions. My situation was unusual in my having to become department chair so early in my career (prior to tenure). Avid readers of this blog already knew this, of course.